Measles Cases Near Double Last Year’s Total as Vaccine Policy Enters the Race

The United States has recorded 4,410 confirmed measles cases so far this year, according to the latest weekly count from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an increase of 330 cases from the week before. The total, current as of Oct. 15, is about 93 percent higher than the 2,289 cases reported in all of 2025, according to Reuters and Contagion Live.

This year’s count is the highest since 1991, according to STAT. The United States declared measles eliminated in 2000, meaning it no longer spread continuously within the country, and public health experts have warned that the country is close to losing that status.

The illness is serious. The CDC has counted 451 measles hospitalizations this year, about 10 percent of cases. Children and teenagers ages 5 to 19 make up the largest group of patients, with 1,856 cases, or 42 percent, and adults account for 41 percent. About 96 percent of cases have occurred in people who were unvaccinated or whose vaccination status is unknown, Contagion Live reported.

Pennsylvania has become the center of the outbreak, with about 1,260 cases and 238 hospitalizations reported by state health officials as of Oct. 16. The state has also reported several measles-related deaths, a figure higher than the CDC’s national tally, and the CDC said it would send additional staff to help investigate.

The outbreak is increasingly entangled with politics. In an essay published Monday by STAT, former Representatives Larry Bucshon of Indiana and Michael Burgess of Texas, both Republicans and both physicians, argued that their party’s mixed messaging on vaccines is confusing parents, fueling hesitancy and becoming a liability for Republican candidates ahead of the Nov. 3 midterms.

They noted that President Trump has said childhood immunizations work and has urged parents to vaccinate, a point the administration’s defenders cite when they reject the charge that it is anti-vaccine. But the authors said the president has also repeated discredited claims linking vaccines to autism, including when he signed an executive order in August to slim down the childhood vaccine schedule, and that the Department of Health and Human Services has unsettled a key vaccine advisory panel and played down the dangers of measles.

The former lawmakers cited polling to make their case, including a KFF survey in which more than 60 percent of voters disapproved of the administration’s handling of vaccine policy, and urged Republican candidates to speak up clearly for access to vaccines approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

Before the measles vaccine became available, the disease infected up to 4 million Americans a year, hospitalized about 48,000 and killed about 500, the former lawmakers wrote. Nearly all of this year’s cases are tied to outbreaks: about 96 percent of confirmed cases are outbreak-associated, according to the CDC’s running tally, and CIDRAP reported that 42 new outbreaks had been identified in 2026 as of mid-October.