WASHINGTON (The Thursday Times) — The United States could lose the measles elimination status it has held since 2000 as early as this week, as a regional panel linked to the World Health Organization meets to decide whether the disease has spread continuously in the country for a year.
An independent commission of experts in epidemiology, public health, virology, and immunisation, appointed by the Pan American Health Organization, the WHO’s regional office for the Americas, is meeting from November 10 to 13. The PAHO director will make the final call.
Worst outbreak in decades
The US has recorded 5,182 confirmed measles cases so far this year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, up from 2,289 in all of 2025 and 285 in 2024. It is the country’s worst measles outbreak since 1991, and almost every state has reported cases.
The surge began in western Texas in January 2025 and spread to Utah, Arizona, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, and other states. At least 11 people have died in nearly two years, most of them unvaccinated or too young to be vaccinated.
The panel’s central question is whether those outbreaks are linked. If genetic data show the same strain has circulated for 12 months, the US meets the definition of having lost elimination. If the outbreaks are separate, it keeps the status.
Vaccination rates slipping
Measles is one of the most contagious diseases known, and around 95 per cent of people need two doses of the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine to stop it spreading. The CDC says 92.4 per cent of American kindergartners were vaccinated against measles this year, down from 95.2 per cent in 2020, and 18 states are below 90 per cent.
Public health experts blame falling vaccination rates and federal health policy under Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, a longtime vaccine critic. “That is a tremendous step backwards,” said Dr Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, of the prospect of losing the status.
Losing it carries no formal penalty. But it would put the US alongside Canada, which lost its elimination status last year, and several countries in Europe and Asia where measles returned after being eliminated.
For ordinary Americans the change is already practical. Health officials in Cleveland, Ohio, have urged residents to find proof of their measles vaccination now, because anyone exposed without it faces a blood test or a 21-day quarantine.
