The Senate Health, Hospitals and Human Services Committee approved a pair of bills during a Tuesday hearing on St. Thomas after receiving an update from V.I. Health Department leadership on worrisome health trends impacting the territory and the U.S. mainland, respectively.
Health Commissioner Justa Encarnacion said hand, foot and mouth disease cases occur annually in the U.S. Virgin Islands, but an outbreak struck the territory this year. As of Friday, there were 272 cases of HFMD on St. Thomas and St. John and five on St. Croix.
The Health Department began alerting the territory to the HFMD outbreak in February after confirming 46 cases on St. Thomas. The disease is transmitted through respiratory droplets from coughing, sneezing or talking as well as by touching contaminated surfaces or coming into contact with fluid from blisters or stool, according to a statement the department issued at the time.
Health officials upped the number of confirmed HFMD cases last month to 188 on St. Thomas and one on St. Croix, and they disclosed that a child under the age of two who had previously been diagnosed with hand, foot and mouth disease died. Encarnacion said health officials still haven’t attributed the death to HFMD.
“We are not able to say whether or not it was related to hand, foot and mouth disease, and so that’s why we’re really not discussing that,” she said Tuesday. “And because we only had one, we tend not to discuss that very often.”
Encarnacion also addressed the rash of measles outbreaks affecting parts of the United States and said no cases have been reported in the territory. Citing the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Encarnacion said there have been 800 confirmed cases of measles in 25 states across the country, with 10 outbreaks in six of the 25 states. Outbreaks are defined as more than three cases.
“We are alarmed by the high rate of transmission, and while no cases have been reported in the territory, we feel it is a matter of when, not if,” Encarnacion testified. “To put it in perspective: for the entire year of 2024, the CDC confirmed a total of 285 measles cases and 16 outbreaks in the U.S., while thus far, in 2025, there have been 515 cases.”
Encarnacion said health officials’ primary concern is that 1- to 6-year-olds in the territory have a vaccination rate of 44.3 percent and she emphasized the importance of the Measles-Mumps-Rubella vaccine. Children under six months of age, pregnant women and immunocompromised individuals should not receive the MMR vaccine, she added, but the department recommends that everyone around them do so to create a “protective barrier.”
A local measles outbreak, Encarnacion cautioned, would present “significant public health risks by overwhelming health care resources.”
“The USVI’s limited hospital capacity will face challenges in managing measles cases, necessitating an emergency response effort that includes isolating infected patients, safeguarding health care workers and addressing complications,” she warned.
At present, there are 486 doses of the MMR vaccine at V.I. Health Department clinics, 108 at local pharmacies and 1,048 available through the Vaccines for Children-participating health care providers.
Later, the Senate Health Committee greenlit a measure requiring that when prescribing opioids, health care practitioners discuss things like: the risk of addiction and overdose; the potential for misuse and abuse; non-opioid alternatives for pain management, when appropriate, and proper use, storage and disposal of prescription opioids.
According to testimony from the Health Department, the CDC reported nearly 70 percent of all recent drug overdose deaths in the U.S. involved opioids. Assistant Health Commissioner Nicole Craigwell-Syms testified that locally, first responders were dispatched to more than a hundred overdose incidents between 2019 and 2025 involving over-the-counter and prescribed medication.
“During that period, we lost eight individuals to opioid overdoses,” she said. “The tragic loss of life highlights the urgent need for action to combat opioid misuse and misinformation, and to safeguard the health and well-being of our residents. The impact of opioid abuse does not only affect the person, it also strains the health care system and exacerbates law enforcement challenges. But more importantly, families are disrupted as individuals struggle with recovery. It is imperative that we adopt effective, evidence-based policies to address this crisis.”
Committee members also approved a measure allowing the Virgin Islands government to implement the federal mandate of the Achieving Better Life Experiences Act, which provides for the establishment of savings accounts for persons with disabilities.
