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

The state's largest measles outbreak in 30 years has been largely tied to a Mennonite community in rural West Texas. Earlier this month, Lara Anton, a spokesperson for the Texas Department of State Health Services,

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., head of the Department of Health and Human Services, downplayed the seriousness of an ongoing measles outbreak in Texas, falsely claiming that people had been hospitalized “mainly for quarantine” and misleadingly stating that the situation is “not unusual.