Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is urging people to get the measles vaccine after months of giving mixed messages amid an outbreak that has sickened hundreds of people and killed two children.
"We encourage people to get the measles vaccine," Kennedy told CBS News on Tuesday. Two days earlier, Kennedy noted in a social media post that the Measles, Mumps and Rubella vaccine is "the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles."
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The messages marked his most emphatic endorsements for vaccination since he became the country's top health official earlier this year.
"The federal government's position, my position, is that people should get the measles vaccine," Kennedy told CBS. But he added: "The government should not be mandating those."
Kennedy, a longtime vaccine critic, previously had touted vaccination as a way to prevent infections, most notably in an Fox News op-ed published last month, but he muddled those endorsements by also pushing unproven treatments and emphasizing personal choice.
This response is too weak and has been too delayed, according to health experts.
"It's shocking that it's in April when the secretary of HHS finally acknowledged that vaccines are the best way to prevent measles," Anne Schuchat, a former top Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official, told The Washington Post, referencing Kennedy's social media post. "When leaders are so confused or even malicious, it's really scary."
There have been more than 600 reported measles infections since January in 22 states – including Pennsylvania and New Jersey. That's the most measles cases the United States has seen in a single year since the 2019 outbreaks. The majority of the cases have been in Texas among unvaccinated individuals, according to the CDC. But the CDC has not held any briefings for experts and reporters or provided in-depth information about the status of the outbreak, as they have in the past, Schuchat said.
"This response does an incredible disservice to what public health could be in this country," Peter Marks, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's top vaccine regulator until the Trump administration shoved him aside last month, told The Post. "It would actually be difficult to even call it an anemic response."
Kennedy was criticized by many health experts for his Fox News op-ed, published March 2. He wrote: "Vaccines not only protect individual children from measles, but also contribute to community immunity, protecting those who are unable to be vaccinated due to medical reasons." But he also wrote that the "decision to vaccinate is a personal one."
In the same piece, Kennedy touted the administration of vitamin A for measles. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends two doses of vitamin A for hospitalized children with measles to help relieve symptoms. Vitamin A is not a prevention or cure for measles, and health experts accused Kennedy of misleading the public about its use.
Measles is so infectious that if one person gets in, 9 out of 10 people nearby will also get it if they are unvaccinated. The disease causes complications that kill between 1 and 3 of every 1,000 children who get infected.
If measles continues to spread for another 12 months at the rate it has been since the start of the year, the measles elimination status achieved in the United States in 2000 will be in peril.
"I think it is going to be something that really pushes us to the deadline for elimination for the United States, as well as for the Americas," Dr. Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told CNN Tuesday.
He and other health officials have estimated that measles cases are being undercounted and that the current outbreaks could be the tip of the iceberg.