The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday upheld the role of vaccines in offering protection against measles after an unvaccinated child succumbed to the infection earlier this week.

Twenty-five years after the disease was declared “eliminated” in the U.S., cases are rising again, with a Texas outbreak now spreading to New Mexico. Measles cases continue to rise in the United States nearly two and a half decades after the virus had been declared eliminated in the country.

The number of confirmed measles cases in western Texas grew to 146, and it is possibly spreading to the central part of the state and neighboring New Mexico, health officials said Friday.