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LUBBOCK (AP) — A child who wasn’t vaccinated died in a measles outbreak in rural West Texas, state officials said Wednesday, the first U.S. death from the highly contagious — but preventable — respiratory disease since 2015.

The school-aged child had been hospitalized and died Tuesday night amid the widespread outbreak, Texas’ largest in nearly 30 years. Since it began last month, a rash of 124 cases has erupted across nine counties.

The Texas Department of State Health Services and Lubbock health officials confirmed the death to The Associated Press. The child wasn’t identified but was treated at Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock, though the facility noted the patient didn’t live in Lubbock County.

“This is a big deal,” Dr. Amy Thompson, a pediatrician and chief executive officer of Covenant Health, said Wednesday at a news conference. “We have known that we have measles in our community, and we are now seeing a very serious consequence.”
In federal response, RFK Jr. appears to misstate several facts

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s top health official and a vaccine critic, said Wednesday that the U.S. Department of the Health and Human Services is watching cases and dismissed the Texas outbreak as “not unusual.”

He appeared to misstate a number of facts, including a claim that most who had been hospitalized were there only for “quarantine.” Dr. Lara Johnson at Covenant contested that characterization.

“We don’t hospitalize patients for quarantine purposes,” said Johnson, the chief medical officer.

Kennedy also seemed to misspeak in saying two people had died of measles. A spokesman — Andrew Nixon, for the Department of Health and Human Services — later clarified that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has identified only one death.

The federal government is providing vaccines as well as technical and laboratory support in West Texas, but the state health department is leading the response, Nixon said.

The CDC has said it will provide only weekly updates on the measles outbreak, and had not yet updated its public webpage to reflect the child’s death. Texas health department data shows that a majority of the reported measles cases are in children.
In rural Texas, some patients have needed oxygen or intubation

The virus has largely spread among rural, oil rig-dotted towns in West Texas, with cases concentrated in a “close-knit, undervaccinated” Mennonite community, state health department spokesperson Lara Anton said.

Gaines County, which has reported 80 cases so far, has a strong homeschooling and private school community. It is also home to one of the highest rates of school-aged children in Texas who have opted out of at least one required vaccine, with nearly 14% skipping a required dose last school year.

More than 20 measles patients have been hospitalized at Covenant, including the outbreak’s first identified case, hospital officials said.

Some patients’ respiratory issues progressed to bacterial pneumonia, and they needed an oxygen tube to breathe, Johnson told The Associated Press. Others had to be intubated, though Johnson declined to say how many due to privacy concerns.

“Unfortunately, like so many viruses, there aren’t any specific treatments for measles,” she said. “What we’re doing is providing supportive care, helping support the patients as they hopefully recover.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said through a spokesman that his office is in regular communication with the state health department and epidemiologists, and that vaccination teams are in the “affected area.”

“The state will deploy all necessary resources to ensure the safety and health of Texans,” said spokesman Andrew Mahaleris, calling the child’s death a tragedy.

Later Wednesday, the state health department confirmed a new measles case in Rockwall County, east of Dallas. The person had traveled internationally and is not related to the West Texas outbreak.
Vaccines are safe and effective, and measles was once considered eliminated

The measles, mumps and rubella vaccine is safe and highly effective at preventing infection and severe cases. The first shot is recommended for children ages 12 to 15 months, and the second for ages 4 to 6 years.

The vaccine series is required for kids before entering kindergarten in public schools nationwide. Most kids will recover from measles, but infection can lead to dangerous complications such as pneumonia, blindness, brain swelling and death.

Vaccination rates have declined nationwide since the COVID-19 pandemic, and most states are below the 95% vaccination threshold for kindergartners — the level needed to protect communities against measles outbreaks.

Last week, Kennedy vowed to investigate the childhood vaccine schedule that prevents measles, polio and other dangerous diseases, despite promises not to change it during his confirmation hearings.

The U.S. had considered measles — a respiratory virus that can survive in the air for up to two hours — eliminated in 2000, which meant there had been a halt in continuous spread of the disease for at least a year. Measles cases rose in 2024, including a Chicago outbreak that sickened more than 60.

In the current outbreak, Lubbock’s first case was in an unvaccinated child who sat in an emergency room with a kid who had measles, said Katherine Wells, director of the local health department, calling it a testament to how quickly the virus spreads.

“When you see it in real life, you really realize how contagious it is,” said Wells, noting she expects more local cases, with a couple under investigation as of Wednesday. “An entire household gets sick so quickly. Whole families are getting sick with measles.”

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AP writers Jim Vertuno and JoNel Aleccia contributed to this report. Seitz reported from Washington.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Clint Hill, the Secret Service agent who leaped onto the back of President John F. Kennedy’s limousine after the president was shot, then was forced to retire early because he remained haunted by memories of the assassination, has died. He was 93.

Hill died Friday at his home in Belvedere, California, according to his publisher, Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. A cause of death was not given.

Although few may recognize his name, the footage of Hill, captured on Abraham Zapruder’s chilling home movie of the assassination, provided some of the most indelible images of Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

Hill received Secret Service awards and was promoted for his actions that day, but for decades blamed himself for Kennedy’s death, saying he didn’t react quickly enough and would gladly have given his life to save the president.

“If I had reacted just a little bit quicker. And I could have, I guess,” a weeping Hill told Mike Wallace on CBS’ 60 Minutes in 1975, shortly after he retired at age 43 at the urging of his doctors. “And I’ll live with that to my grave.”

It was only in recent years that Hill said he was able to finally start putting the assassination behind him and accept what happened.

On the day of the assassination, Hill was assigned to protect first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, and was riding on the left running board of the follow-up car directly behind the presidential limousine as it made its way through Dealey Plaza.

Hill told the Warren Commission that he reacted after hearing a shot and seeing the president slump in his seat. The president was struck by a fatal headshot before Hill was able to make it to the limousine.

Zapruder’s film captured Hill as he leaped from the Secret Service car, grabbed a handle on the limousine’s trunk and pulled himself onto it as the driver accelerated. He forced Mrs. Kennedy, who had crawled onto the trunk, back into her seat as the limousine sped off.

Hill later became the agent in charge of the White House protective detail and eventually an assistant director of the Secret Service, retiring because of what he characterized as deep depression and recurring memories of the assassination.

The 1993 Clint Eastwood thriller “In the Line of Fire,” about a former Secret Service agent scarred by the JFK assassination, was inspired in part by Hill.

Hill was born in 1932 and grew up in Washburn, North Dakota. He attended Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, served in the Army and worked as a railroad agent before joining the Secret Service in 1958. He worked in the agency’s Denver office for about a year, before joining the elite group of agents assigned to protect the president and first family.

Since his retirement, Hill has spoken publicly about the assassination only a handful of times, but the most poignant was his 1975 interview with Wallace, during which Hill broke down several times.

“If I had reacted about five-tenths of a second faster, maybe a second faster, I wouldn’t be here today,” Hill said.

“You mean you would have gotten there and you would have taken the shot?” Wallace asked.

“The third shot, yes, sir,” Hill said.

“And that would have been all right with you?”

“That would have been fine with me,” Hill responded.

In his 2005 memoir, “Between You and Me,” Wallace recalled his interview with Hill as one of the most moving of his career.

In 2006, Wallace and Hill reunited on CNN’s “Larry King Live,” where Hill credited that first 60 Minutes interview with helping him finally start the healing process.

“I have to thank Mike for asking me to do that interview and then thank him more because he’s what caused me to finally come to terms with things and bring the emotions out where they surfaced,” he said. “It was because of his questions and the things he asked that I started to recover.”

Decades after the assassination, Hill co-authored several books — including “Mrs. Kennedy and Me” and “Five Presidents” — about his Secret Service years with Lisa McCubbin Hill, whom he married in 2021.

“We had that once-in-a-lifetime love that everyone hopes for,” McCubbin Hill said in a statement. “We were soulmates.”

Clint Hill also became a speaker and gave interviews about his experience in Dallas. In 2018, he was given the state of North Dakota’s highest civilian honor, the Theodore Roosevelt Rough Rider Award. A portrait of Hill adorns a Capitol gallery of fellow honorees.

A private funeral service will be held in Washington, D.C., at a future date.