The number of people across the country who have gotten sick with measles is undoubtedly much higher because many don’t get tested, experts say.
The new milestone, the highest number of confirmed cases since 1991, is yet another indication that the highly contagious virus is taking over, particularly in areas of the country with plummeting vaccination rates. Outbreaks are driving up healthcare costs and have led to hundreds of hospitalizations, including of children and pregnant women.
“Measles is acting like it’s endemic now. There’s a lot of domestic transmission,” said Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who directed the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases before resigning last year. “If I were a betting person, I would expect 5,000-plus cases this year.”
The ongoing outbreaks are threatening the country’s status of having eliminated measles in 2000. Nearly everyone who’s had measles caught the virus from a family member, a neighbor or another person within U.S. borders, experts say. Just 16 cases were reported among people visiting from other countries.
Global health officials are eyeing the U.S. measles situation carefully. In November, a group within the World Health Organization, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), will meet to decide whether the U.S. has lost its measles elimination status.
PAHO is looking specifically at whether a single chain of measles transmission has gone on for more than 12 months, as well as whether there are a significant number of cases for which the source of infection is unknown, said Noel Brewer, the chair of an independent committee that assists the CDC in analyzing the country’s measles situation ahead of the PAHO meeting.
“The country’s had measles cases every week for the last 20 months, and at least one regional outbreak has already passed the 12-month mark,” said Brewer, also a professor of public health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “There’s no end in sight.”
Daskalakis likened losing measles elimination status to finding uncontrolled blood pressure during a routine medical checkup: It’s a warning signal of health problems to come.
“Measles elimination is more than continuous transmission. It’s also, ‘Do you have a public health system that’s able to respond nimbly? Do you have adequate surveillance? Do you have an environment that’s conducive to high coverage for measles vaccine?’” Daskalakis said.
The development would indicate “a loss of faith” in the country’s ability to control outbreaks, said Dr. William Moss, a professor in the departments of epidemiology and international health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
“Getting it back would take a tremendous amount of work,” Moss said. “We would have to stop measles virus transmission in the country, and then undergo a reverification process.”
In addition to the Pennsylvania deaths, three others died of complications related to measles in 2025. Those deaths occurred in Texas and New Mexico and were immediately recognized by the CDC.
After a public tug-of-war between Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who announced the recent deaths during a briefing last week, and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who suggested on social media that the deaths had been “fabricated” by one of the governor’s staff members, the CDC hasn’t officially acknowledged the 2026 deaths.
On Friday, the CDC referred a request for comment to a post on X from Kennedy saying that the agency “will continue to update its reporting as additional information becomes available.”
