US Loses Measles-Free Status After 26 Years As Death Toll Hits 10

The United States has lost the measles elimination status it has held since 2000, after an independent commission that reports to the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) found the virus has been spreading inside the country for more than a year. The Wall Street Journal first reported the decision on Friday, and CNN confirmed it with a source close to the process.

The commission held its annual meeting from Nov. 10 to 13 and was set to “classify countries according to their elimination status” at its close, PAHO said in its October notice. Its findings go to PAHO’s director, who formally passes the classification to each government, and a public announcement is expected next week. PAHO had put the US and Mexico under review in January, and said in March that the clock for the US started on Jan. 20, 2025, a year from the onset of its outbreaks.

By the CDC’s case tracker, 5,412 confirmed measles cases were reported in 2026 as of Nov. 12, more than double the 2,289 for all of 2025, from 47 jurisdictions, with 96% of them tied to outbreaks and 43 new outbreaks this year. It is the most since 1991, when the country recorded 9,643, as we reported in July, when this year’s count first passed 2025’s total.

Pennsylvania’s Department of Health confirmed on Friday its seventh measles-associated death of the year, an unvaccinated Montour County resident, with 1,542 cases across 46 counties and 305 hospitalizations. Wisconsin’s health department reported the same day a second pediatric death, confirmed with the Grant County Health Department, in an outbreak that has reached 649 cases in 20 counties since August.

With the New York child who died earlier this month, the states have now reported 10 measles deaths this year (New York’s first in more than 30 years, as we noted). The CDC’s tracker lists six, a figure it says is “subject to change.”

That gap has been a fight since August, when Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote on X that Pennsylvania’s first two deaths “may even have been altogether fabricated by one of the Governor’s hopeful staffers” (more here). Pennsylvania said both people had tested positive for measles before they died and were unvaccinated.

Scientists at Utah’s public health lab reported in an August preprint that a single strain had circulated in the state for more than a year, causing more than 600 cases between June 2025 and June 2026. South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and New York have all had outbreaks that ran for months, CNN reported.

“Whatever PAHO determines, our mission does not change,” an HHS spokesperson told The 74 on Friday, adding that Kennedy and CDC Director Erica Schwartz “continue to recommend MMR vaccination.”

Canada lost its status last November, and with it the Americas as a whole lost their verification as free of endemic measles, PAHO said at the time.

“Basically, measles is back,” Dr. Peter Hotez told CNN. To win the status back, the US has to go at least 12 months without any strain of the virus spreading continuously, and Dr. William Moss told CNN that won’t be easy with nonmedical exemptions rising and kindergarten MMR rates falling.