The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention upheld the role of vaccines in offering protection against measles after an unvaccinated child succumbed to the infection earlier this week. The U.S.

Twenty-five years after the disease was declared “eliminated” in the U.S., cases are rising again, with a Texas outbreak now spreading to New Mexico. Measles cases continue to rise in the United States nearly two and a half decades after the virus had been declared eliminated in the country.

Gaines County in West Texas is at the heart of the ongoing measles outbreak. Non-medical vaccine exemption rates there are high.