The US is having its worst year for measles in more than three decades
[July 10, 2025]
By DEVI SHASTRI
The U.S. is having its worst year for measles spread in more than three
decades, and the year is only half over.
The national case count reached 1,288 on Wednesday, according to the
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, though public health
experts say the true figure may be higher.
The CDC's count is 14 more than 2019, when America almost lost its
status of having eliminated the vaccine-preventable illness — something
that could happen this year if the virus spreads without stopping for 12
months. But the U.S. is far from 1991, when there were 9,643 confirmed
cases.
In a short statement, the federal government said that the CDC
“continues to recommend (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccines as the
best way to protect against measles.” It also said it is “supporting
community efforts” to tamp down ongoing outbreaks as requested.
Fourteen states have active outbreaks; four other states' outbreaks have
ended. The largest outbreak started five months ago in undervaccinated
communities in West Texas. Three people have died — two children in
Texas and an adult in New Mexico — and dozens of people have been
hospitalized across the U.S.
But there are signs that transmission is slowing, especially in Texas.
Lubbock County's hospitals treated most of the sickest patients in the
region, but the county hasn't seen a new case in 50 days, public health
director Katherine Wells said.
“What concerned me early on in this outbreak was is it spreading to
other parts of the United States, and that’s definitely what’s happening
now,” she said.
In 2000, the World Health Organization and CDC said measles had been
eliminated from the U.S. The closer a disease gets to eradication, the
harder it can seem to stamp it out, said Dr. Jonathan Temte, a family
physician in Wisconsin who helped certify that distinction 25 years ago.
It's hard to see measles cases break records despite the widespread
availability of a vaccine, he added. The measles, mumps and rubella
vaccine is safe and is 97% effective at preventing measles after two
doses.
“When we have tools that can be really helpful and see that they’re
discarded for no good reason, it’s met with a little bit of melancholy
on our part,” Temte said of public health officials and primary care
providers.
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 Wells said she is concerned about
continuing vaccine hesitancy. A recent study found childhood
vaccination rates against measles fell after the COVID-19 pandemic
in nearly 80% of the more than 2,000 U.S. counties with available
data, including in states that are battling outbreaks this year. And
CDC data showed that only 92.7% of kindergarteners in the U.S. had
the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine in the 2023-2024 school year,
below the 95% needed to prevent outbreaks.
State and federal leaders have for years kept funding stagnant for
local public health departments’ vaccination programs that are
tasked with reversing the trend. Wells said she talks with local
public health leaders nationwide about how to prepare for an
outbreak, but also says the system needs more investment.
“What we’re seeing with measles is a little bit of a ‘canary in a
coal mine,’” said Lauren Gardner, leader of Johns Hopkins
University’s independent measles and COVID-19 tracking databases.
“It’s indicative of a problem that we know exists with vaccination
attitudes in this county and just, I think, likely to get worse.”
Currently, North America has three other major measles outbreaks:
2,966 cases in Chihuahua state, Mexico, 2,223 cases in Ontario,
Canada and 1,246 in Alberta, Canada. The Ontario, Chihuahua and
Texas outbreaks stem from large Mennonite communities in the
regions. Mennonite churches do not formally discourage vaccination,
though more conservative Mennonite communities historically have low
vaccination rates and a distrust of government.
In 2019, the CDC identified 22 outbreaks with the largest in two
separate clusters in New York — 412 in New York state and 702 in New
York City. These were linked because measles was spreading through
close-knit Orthodox Jewish communities, the CDC said.
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AP videojournalist Laura Bargfeld contributed to this report.
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