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The measles virus continues to find new people to infect in West Texas. With two confirmed deaths and one under investigation in the current outbreak, the health implications of measles are evident. Perhaps less obvious is the economic burden.
Dr. Alan Melnick is the director of public health for Clark County, Washington. He said that during a measles outbreak in 2019, there was "an exposure at the Moda Center where the Portland Trailblazers play." It's a large space—a sports arena which has a seating capacity of over 19,300 when configured for basketball games.
The governor had declared a state of emergency during that crisis. However, the same measure has not happened in Texas.
In a 2019 interview with NPR's Ari Shapiro Melnick asserted about the outbreak in his part of the country that the "problem was 100 percent preventable."
By the time the outbreak ended, there were 71 confirmed measles cases. And no deaths.
Melnick is still the head of Clark County's health agency and has studied that 2019 outbreak with particular attention to the costs of the crisis.
"Our analysis of the cost of our measles outbreak was $47,479 per case."
Overall, the cost of the outbreak was just over 3 million dollars.
Melnick said the Texas outbreak is going to be much more expensive— mainly because of the number of hospitalizations.
"We had two hospitalizations. The last I heard you [in Texas] had about 50 hospitalizations there."
As of Friday, there were 57 measles hospitalizations connected to the West Texas outbreak – and each one will cost thousands of dollars.
Dr. Maria Sundaram is an infectious disease epidemiologist and researcher at Marshfield Clinic Research Institute.
"Well, the cost of an average measles hospitalization is certainly more than $10,000," she said.
"So those costs are not just the immediate cost of healthcare, which is obviously very high in those cases," she continued. "But it's also the long-term cost of how that person is affected throughout the rest of their life."
Dr. Sundaram said the biggest expense of a measles outbreak is the public health response in shutting down the outbreak.
"And that's investigating contacts of cases, tracking folks down and making sure that they're safe, making sure they have access to vaccines, making sure that they have measles tests available," she added. "That is incredibly difficult. And it's a really big cost because measles is so infectious."
State Representative Ann Johnson, a Democrat from District 134 in Houston, believes that this is why the current measles outbreak is costing Texas taxpayers millions of dollars.
"When people talk about this as a public health crisis—not only a danger to the community and individuals, but to the Texas taxpayers—it's actually going to be incredibly expensive," she said.
Johnson said with cuts at the CDC, Texas and other states will have to spend more on public health.
But when it comes to spending on public health, Texas has not been willing to invest at the level of most other states.
Texas is near the bottom of states for per-person spending on public health. Just 17 dollars in 2023. That's according to the State Health Access Data Assistance Center.
New Mexico, which has limited its measles to 58 cases, spends $235 per person on public health.
Dr. Sundaram said the best bargain for taxpayers is funding a robust vaccination program.
"The average cost for one dose of an MMR vaccine provided by the Vaccines for Children program is $2 and 60 cents," said Dr. Sundaram, highlighting the implication that vaccines save money, save children and families from misery and, most importantly, save lives.
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