Federal health officials are predicting that this year's measles outbreak will surpass last years record number of cases, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
The warning comes as the number of parents choosing to 'opt out' their children from mandatory back to school inoculations.
Chris Van Deusen of the Texas Department of State Health Services says as many as three percent of all elementary students will not have vaccinations against diseases like the measles when school starts later this month, and that is not good news.
"Measles in particular is extremely contagious," Van Deusen said. "If someone who has it is actively sick with it, is in a room with somebody who doesn't have immunity, there is a 90% chance or more that other person is going to get sick, it is just so contagious.
"And infectious disease specialist Dr. Peter Hotez of Baylor College of Medicine says that is one reason for concern.
"There are 57,000 kids in Texas not getting vaccine and those are the ones we know about," Hotez said. "We don't know about the vaccine status of more than 300,000 home schooled kids."
Unlike other conspiracy theories, the completely debunked 'anti-vaxxer' movement appears to be more common among higher educated and wealthier Texans. The Texas school with the largest percentage of students who are 'opting out' of vaccination is a private high school in Austin where tuition starts at $16,000 a year.
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