In an interview with Ars Technica last week, Zach Holbrooks, the executive director of the South Plains Public Health District (SPPHD), which includes Gaines, said that the area has a large religious community that has expressed vaccine hesitancy.
Additional cases likely
Pockets of the county have yet lower vaccination rates than the county-wide averages suggest. For instance, one independent public school district in Loop, in the northeast corner of Gaines, had a vaccination rate of 46 percent in the 2023–2024 school year.
Measles is one of the most infectious diseases known. The measles virus spreads through the air and can linger in the airspace of a room for up to two hours after an infected person has left. Ninety percent of unvaccinated people who are exposed will fall ill with the disease, which is marked by a very high fever and a telltale rash. Typically, 1 in 5 unvaccinated people with measles in the US end up hospitalized, and 1 in 20 develop pneumonia. Between 1 to 3 in 1,000 die of the infection. In rare cases, it can cause a fatal disease of the central nervous system called Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis later in life. Measles can also wipe out immune responses to other infections (a phenomenon known as immune amnesia), making people vulnerable to other infectious diseases.
“Due to the highly contagious nature of this disease, additional cases are likely to occur in Gaines County and the surrounding communities,” the state health department said.
While Gaines is remarkable for its low vaccination rate, vaccination coverage nationwide has slipped in recent years as vaccine misinformation and hesitancy have taken root. Overall, vaccination rates among US kindergartners have fallen from 95 percent in the 2019–2020 school year into the 92 percent range in the 2023–2024 school year. Vaccine exemptions, meanwhile, have hit an all-time high. Health experts expect to see more vaccine-preventable outbreaks, like the one in Gaines, as the trend continues.
Beth Mole
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