The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has begun redeploying staff to respond to the deadly outbreak of measles in Texas, a spokesperson said Monday, a week after steep layoffs at the agency impacted its response to the spread of the virus.
“A team of three deployed yesterday to meet with county and state officials to assess the immediate needs to respond to this outbreak. The team is meeting with officials again today,” CDC spokesperson Jason McDonald said in an email.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. first said Sunday that the CDC would be redeploying to Texas at its governor’s request, after another unvaccinated child died in the measles outbreak. An 8-year-old girl was the second fatality there this year.
“Once the assessment is complete, more CDC staff will be sent to Texas per Sec. Kennedy’s order and the governor’s request. The first teams deployed to Texas arrived on March and returned to CDC on April 1,” McDonald said.
Multiple agency staff working on the CDC’s measles response were among the thousands cut from the agency last week, officials have told CBS News.
A handful of employees at agencies within the department have been brought back to work so far, multiple officials said, at least through the end of the 60 day period before their layoff notices formally take effect.
McDonald did not comment on whether laid-off staff who had been working on the agency’s measles response would be among those Kennedy might reinstate.
The ongoing outbreak in Texas and neighboring states has driven this year’s tally of U.S. measles cases to the highest levels seen since a large wave of cases in 2019, which was the worst in the U.S. in decades.
While dozens of measles cases are reported every year, usually linked to undervaccinated travelers returning from trips outside the country, health authorities have warned that ongoing community spread of the virus this year is now threatening America’s status of having eliminated endemic spread of the virus.
There have been six measles outbreaks so far this year, a CDC spokesperson told CBS News on Friday. The outbreak in Texas and neighboring states makes up the majority of cases. Smaller outbreaks are also ongoing in New Jersey, Georgia, Ohio and Kansas.
Details of the sixth outbreak have not yet been released, the spokesperson said, citing patient privacy.
Kennedy calls vaccine “most effective way” to stop measles spread
While in Texas, Kennedy also posted on X that the “most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine.” The MMR vaccine protects against measles, mumps and rubella, and is normally given in two doses in early childhood.
Kennedy’s range of statements about the measles vaccine in recent weeks have drawn scrutiny from health experts, including after a Fox News interview in which he falsely inflated the shot’s risks.
In a later post, Kennedy also said he had met with “two extraordinary healers” who he said have “healed some 300 measles-stricken Mennonite children using aerosolized budesonide and clarithromycin.”
Budesonide can sometimes help to treat respiratory illnesses, reducing inflammation in the lungs, said pediatrics professor Dr. James Campbell of the University of Maryland in an email in March. CBS News reached out to Campbell after Kennedy previously hailed “miraculous and instantaneous recovery” from use of these treatments.
“In 2025, we should not have to treat measles in the US because it is completely preventable, but of course, like all preventable diseases, we do,” said Campbell.
Campbell is vice chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics committee that develops recommendations for treating measles and other infectious diseases.
Clarithromycin, an antibacterial drug, has no effect on viruses like measles but can be used by doctors to treat coinfections from some bacterial pneumonias that sometimes develop in infected children, Campbell said. However, it does not work for all bacteria.
“These choices should be made on an individual basis by the doctors, not as sweeping recommendations for all children with measles,” said Campbell. He said that the drugs don’t have evidence proving they should be used as routine treatments for measles and cautioned against “sweeping statements about how those singular choices related to treatment of measles in general.”
“Vaccination will prevent measles, but for those who do get measles, rigorous studies, and not anecdotal reports, will help us to better treat them,” said Campbell.
Kennedy’s embrace of alternative therapies has been contradicted by other health experts, including former Trump administration officials.
“My children and grandchildren will not die of measles, because they are vaccinated. And there is no substitute, nor any effective treatment, for measles,” Dr. Brett Giroir, an adviser to the department this year, wrote in an opinion piece published by RealClearHealth last week.
The editorial from Giroir, who previously worked as assistant secretary of health during President Trump’s first term, was published before news of the second child to die in the Texas measles outbreak. In the U.S., a child last died from measles in 2015.
“One child’s death from measles is a tragedy not only for the family and their community but also for our nation. If we can’t stop measles, really what can we do? Let’s not wait for another tragedy,” Giroir said.
