NPR’s Adrian Florido speaks with Dr. Ron Cook of Lubbock, Texas, about the measles outbreak in his state – and what the Lubbock Health Department is doing to try to control it.
ADRIAN FLORIDO, HOST:
Rural northwest Texas is full of rolling plains and beautiful, wide open skies. It’s also where officials are racing to contain a rapidly spreading outbreak of measles. Most of the state’s nearly 150 confirmed cases have come from this region. On Wednesday, Texas officials announced the outbreak had claimed its first life, a child who was unvaccinated and was being treated at a hospital in the area’s largest city, Lubbock. We’ve reached Dr. Ron Cook. He’s a family physician and also the top medical officer in Lubbock. He’s helping lead the public health response. Hello, Dr. Cook.
RON COOK: Hello.
FLORIDO: Dr. Cook, why is measles spreading in the communities near where you live?
COOK: That’s a largely unvaccinated community over there by choice. It’s about an hour and a half away from us. And so measles is so infectious, it can really ravage through a population that’s not vaccinated.
FLORIDO: The epicenter of this outbreak is in Gaines County. I think that’s where you’re referring to.
COOK: Yes, Gaines County.
FLORIDO: Can you tell us some of the things that you and other health officials have been doing to try to contain this outbreak?
COOK: Well, lots of education, of course. We’ve also offered a big – what we call an emergency response bus, a 15-passenger bus that’s set up like a big portable clinic to give out vaccines, to do free testing and free vaccines and lots of education in the community trying to get people to understand that this is a very safe vaccine to take and then things to do in order to help prevent the spread of the disease further.
FLORIDO: And what makes containing an outbreak so hard?
COOK: It’s so virulent and so infectious that the problem comes – if you’re not vaccinated – so we put 100 people in a room, 90-plus people will be infected with this virus. You take flu, for example – you put 100 people in a room, one or two other people around you in the same amount of time will be infected. In this case, 80-plus, 90-plus percent of those people will be infected. It just spreads rapidly.
FLORIDO: Measles was declared eliminated in the U.S. a quarter-century ago, Dr. Cook, thanks to widespread vaccination. As you’ve noted, in these communities where the outbreak is spreading, a lot of folks are not vaccinated. There’s a lot more skepticism about vaccines right now, a lot of that being fueled by officials at the very top of our government. Did you ever imagine you’d be trying to manage a measles outbreak of this scale?
COOK: No. You know, this is a very safe vaccine. You know, there’s some association thought that it caused autism. That has been disproven and certainly disinformation about this vaccine. It’s been disproven over and over. You know, this hearkens back to COVID days, and I think this – that’s what it feels to us, the public health people trying to stop the disease. And I think because of COVID, we’ve had more vaccine hesitancy, so we’re seeing certainly a surge in flu. We’re certainly seeing another surge in COVID. We’re seeing surges of pertussis, which is the highest it’s been in nine years. All those are vaccine-preventable diseases. And so we’re seeing a rise in all of those, and it really makes us nervous.
FLORIDO: How do you overcome some of these issues? How do you convince people to get vaccinated?
COOK: Just lots and lots of education, trying to get people vaccinated – we’re seeing certainly a bigger uptake in making sure everybody has their measles vaccine up to date, so we’ve had lots of luck doing that. We’ve seen even in that community that’s been somewhat vaccine-hesitant. Especially as of, you know, unfortunate – our unfortunate death that we had, they’re seeing how severe it can be. And that’s what I want emphasizes is, what we don’t predict and can’t predict is who’s going to do worse if they get the disease, and it may be your child.
FLORIDO: I understand you have a 10-month old granddaughter.
COOK: I do. I do.
FLORIDO: Are you worried about her?
COOK: I am worried about her. In fact, her pediatrician gave her an early dose of the vaccine yesterday – not on my account, but because the pediatrician was also concerned.
FLORIDO: How long might it take to get this outbreak under control in your communities, Dr. Cook?
COOK: It’s going to smolder for a while. You know, it’s – fortunately, the bigger cities like Lubbock have a pretty high vaccination rate, so it’ll slow down. There will still be cases of it prop up. We’ve already had two in our own city from an exposure. There are people that cannot take the vaccine because they’re immunocompromised or somebody that’s younger than six months. Those individuals can’t take the vaccine, and we don’t want those individuals sick. And so it’s going to smolder, I think, for the next several months.
FLORIDO: I’ve been speaking with Dr. Ron Cook, the Lubbock health authority and chief health officer at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. Thanks so much for joining us.
COOK: My pleasure, Adrian.
Copyright © 2025 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
