Kennedy defiende su postura sobre vacunas en medio del aumento de sarampión en EE.UU.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. defended his record on vaccines and measles outbreaks during a CNN interview Sunday, even as the United States faces its worst measles resurgence in more than three decades, according to KVIA.

Kennedy blamed pandemic lockdowns on Dr. Anthony Fauci rather than state and local officials who implemented them in response to overwhelmed hospitals during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. "Trump, as you recall, wanted to end the lockdowns. I think the thing that did the most damage to our country was the lockdowns," Kennedy said on "State of the Union with Dana Bash."

When pressed on measles outbreaks, Kennedy told Bash that "the communities that are suffering from measles are almost all religious communities that just don't vaccinate." A Mennonite community in West Texas was the focus of an outbreak that began last year, but the virus spread to unvaccinated populations outside that group and reached nearly 800 cases, including two child deaths, according to KVIA.

The 2026 measles outbreaks have produced more than 90% of cases among people who were unvaccinated or of unknown vaccination status, with South Carolina reporting the most cases of any state. An outbreak in Spartanburg County became the largest the U.S. has seen in decades, with nearly 1,000 cases before ending in April.

Kennedy stated that his agency's websites recommend parents vaccinate children for measles and said he has "never questioned the efficacy of the MMR vaccine." But in March 2025, as measles spread to New Mexico and Oklahoma, Kennedy told Fox News that outbreaks could stem partly from waning vaccine immunity. "The vaccine is effective for some people for life, but for many people, it wanes," he said, according to KVIA.

Dr. Ashish Jha, who served as White House COVID-19 response coordinator under President Joe Biden from 2022 to 2023, contradicted Kennedy's claims. "There was a lot of information that Secretary Kennedy said that just isn't true. It's just factually not true," Jha said. Health officials note that two doses of the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine are 97% effective against infection, and that outbreaks remain likely anywhere vaccination rates fall below 95%.