School of Mathematical & Statistical Sciences Faculty Publications
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
8-5-2026
Abstract
Background
In 2025, Texas experienced its largest measles outbreak in decades, reporting 762 cases by mid-August. Measles is a highly contagious but vaccine-preventable infection transmitted mainly among unvaccinated individuals and capable of causing severe outcomes.
Methods
We investigate counterfactual measles control scenarios based on daycare and school closures and reactive vaccination of infants and children, including mixed interventions. We analyze the 2025 Texas outbreak using an age-structured multi-stage SEIR model formulated as a system of ordinary differential equations. The model is fit to case data using Bayesian inference to estimate the effective reproduction number and generate posterior predictive trajectories under alternative closure and vaccination scenarios.
Results
The effective reproduction number Re was estimated to have a median of 3.52 with a 95% high density interval (HDI) of 2.1–5.4. Posterior predictive trajectories have medians that closely match the observed data in different age groups. A combined vaccination campaign and short-term closures could reduce the cases by up to 21%. The combined daycare and school closure produced the greatest marginal benefit during the first 7 weeks, after which the additional benefit declined rapidly, which shows diminishing returns. Reactive vaccination campaigns also exhibited diminishing marginal returns, with the number of additional averted cases decreasing nonlinearly with each 0.1% increase in vaccination rate, yielding small gains at higher vaccination levels.
Conclusions
The measles outbreak is probably due to decreased immunity levels in the affected counties. Implementing extended daycare and school closures, supplemented with a swift, reactive vaccination campaign, can be highly effective in containing the local measles outbreak.
Recommended Citation
Oraby, Tamer, and Martial L. Ndeffo-Mbah. "The 2025 measles outbreak in Texas." BMC Infectious Diseases (2026). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12879-026-13663-2
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Publication Title
BMC Infectious Diseases
DOI
10.1186/s12879-026-13663-2
Comments
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material.