While measles spreads, Kennedy includes funds such as liver oil

As a measles outbreak in West texas, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary for health and human services, cheered several unconventional treatments on Tuesday, including CoD liver oil, but again the Americans are not vaccinating.

In a recorded interview that was broadcast in Fox News, Kennedy said that the Federal Government sent the shipping cans from vitamines to Gaines County, the epicenter of the outbreak, and contributed to arranging ambulances.

HHS officials previously stated to send doses of the measles mump-rubella vaccine to Texas, but Mr. Kennedy did not discuss vaccination.

The Texas doctors had seen “very, very good results”, Kennedy claimed by treating measles cases with a steroid, budesonide. an antibiotic called Clarithromycin; and cod liver oil from which he said he had a high mirror of vitamin A and vitamin D.

While doctors sometimes give doses of vitamin A to treat children with severe measles cases, liver oil with severe measles is “by no means” evidence -based treatment, said Dr. Sean O’Leary, Chairman of the American Academy of the Pediatrie Committee for Infectious Diseases.

Dr. O’Leary added that he had never heard of a doctor who used the addition to measles.

In comments that seemed to refer to conventional measures against measles, Mr. Kennedy said: “For the first time in history, we will be honest with the American people about what we do not know – about all tests and all studies about what we know what we do not know.”

“We will tell you, and this will annoy some people who want an ideological approach to public health.”

In addition, the centers for the control and prevention of diseases announced on Tuesday that they would send some of his “disease detectives” to Texas to strengthen the efforts to return the virus.

The outbreak shows no signs of slowing down, according to the data published on Tuesday by state health officers.

The Texas Ministry of Health reported that almost 160 people have assigned measles since the end of January – 20 other cases than registered on Friday – and 22 in the hospital.

The message comes in the middle of the criticism of federal officials to prevent the need for vaccinations with the vaccine master mump-rubella vaccine, one of the most important instruments when suppressing an outbreak.

The dimensions of the outbreak that has already killed a child are unclear. The official case number in the Texas outbreak is most likely a settlement, said Katherine Wells, the director of public health in Lubbock, Texas.

The outbreak has largely spread in a community of Mennonites in Gaines County, which historically had lower vaccination rates and often avoid interacting with the health system.

Ms. Wells said that many of these families had no medical help for measles and were not taken into account in the official figures in the state.

“I think it’s probably in the hundreds,” she said. “We know that some of their schools were closed with many sick children, but we don’t know who these children were.”

Last year, around 82 percent of the district’s kindergartens received the measles vaccine. Experts say that at least 95 percent of people in a community have to be vaccinated to ward off outbreaks.

The falling vaccination rates in the United States have left growing pockets in need of protection, which makes it more likely that an outbreak from a group that has not been vaccinated to another.

Only 93 percent of kindergarten teachers across the country received the vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella in the school year 2023-24, of 95 percent before pandemic.

“As an American, we benefited a lot by distributing these communities,” said Michael Mina, a vaccine expert and former professor of epidemiology at the Harvard Th Chan School of Public Health.

“A case in one of them can ignite in all cases because they no longer benefit from this space,” he said.

In Texas, measles cases were confirmed in nine districts, of which many vaccination rates have under the federal recommendations.

About 80 percent of kindergarten teachers in one of the public school districts in Terry County, the neighbors, were vaccinated according to recent state data for measles. This district reported 22 cases of measles on Tuesday.

A district in New Mexico, which borders Gaines County, has reported nine measles cases.

While most measles cases detach in a few weeks, the virus can in rare cases cause pneumonia, which makes it difficult for patients, especially children, difficult to bring oxygen in their lungs or swelling of the brain, which can lead to blindness, numbness and intellectual disabilities.

According to the CDC, about one of five people who catches measles is taken to the hospital

The virus also weakens the immune system in the long term and makes its host more susceptible to future infections. A study from 2015 showed that measles before the MMR vaccine was widespread, possibly responsible for up to half of all deaths of infectious diseases in children.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed the reporting.