内容摘要：The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Mexico considered measles eliminated in 1998. But its vaccination rate against the virus was around 76% as of 2023, according to the World Health Organization — a dip from previous years and well below the 95% rate experts say is needed to prevent outbreaks.Mexico’s current outbreak began in March. Officials traced it to an 8-year-old unvaccinated Mennonite boy who visited relatives in Seminole, Texas — at the center of the U.S. outbreak.

Cases rapidly spread through Chihuahua’s 46,000-strong Mennonite community via schools and churches, according to religious and health leaders. From there, they said, it spread to workers in orchards and cheese plants.Farm worker Fernando Pedro Cruz Vencinos tends to an apple orchard in a Mennonite community, the epicenter of a measles outbreak, in Cuauhtemoc, Mexico, Mexico, Thursday, May 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Megan Janetsky)Farm worker Fernando Pedro Cruz Vencinos tends to an apple orchard in a Mennonite community, the epicenter of a measles outbreak, in Cuauhtemoc, Mexico, Mexico, Thursday, May 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Megan Janetsky)

Gloria Elizabeth Vega, an Indigenous Raramuri woman and single mother, fell sick in March. Because she’s vaccinated, measles didn’t occur to her until she broke out in hives. Her supervisor at the cheese factory — who also caught measles — told her she had to take 10 days of leave and docked her pay 40% for the week, Vega said.It’s rare for vaccinated people to get measles, but officials say that may account for up to 10% of cases here, though they’re milder.

Vega tucked herself away in the back of her two-room home, hoping her daughter and mother — also vaccinated — wouldn’t get sick. She wishes people would think of others when considering vaccination.

“They say, ‘Well, I have enough to be fine,’” she said. “But they don’t think about that other person next to them, or wonder if that person has enough to live off of.”But some horse owners were ready.

When Meredith McKenzie got a notice days before of the heightened fire risk, she asked people at her barn to help evacuate her horse so she could focus on caring for her sister who has Alzheimer’s.“Horse people are not stupid about if there’s fire coming. We’re out before it starts because once that smoke happens, the horses go nuts and go crazy,” McKenzie said. “It’s very hard to corral them because they just want to run.”

The ranch where she kept her horses, the historic Bob Williams Ranch on Cheney Trail, burned, she said. McKenzie lost her equipment but another ranch has said they’ll give her a saddle and bridle.Suzanne Cassel evacuated Tuesday from Topanga with her two horses, a donkey named Oscar Nelson, four dogs and two cats. They rushed to nab a spot at a large animal emergency shelter at Pierce College, a community college in Woodlands Hills.