US Loses Measles Elimination Status After 25 Years, PAHO Finds

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, Emily Hilliard, attributed the resurgence to vaccination gaps that opened years before the current administration. Childhood vaccination rates have indeed declined steadily since the COVID pandemic began.

Many scientists, though, also blame the Trump administration for spreading vaccine misinformation and slowing outbreak responses. The administration cut millions of dollars from state-run children's immunization programs and terminated funding for research on vaccine hesitancy.

After Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sacked CDC director Susan Monarez in August 2025, she told Congress she was fired for refusing to preapprove changes to vaccine recommendations "without reviewing the evidence." She added that "we already have seen the largest measles outbreak in more than 30 years" and warned that "if vaccine protections are weakened, preventable diseases will return."

The White House pushed back. "The President and the Secretary have repeatedly encouraged measles vaccination, coordinated with states, and facilitated the deployment of vaccine doses across the country," spokesperson Allison Schuster wrote in an email.

How different was the response in past outbreaks?

For three decades, the federal government treated measles as a preventable tragedy, and sizable outbreaks triggered national vaccination pushes. Patsy Stinchfield, executive director of the Measles Collaborative, worked as a pediatric nurse in Minnesota during the 1989–1991 surge, when two children at her hospital died. "That changed my career forever," she said. Back then, she said, the federal government "saw the urgency." The CDC pushed out clinical guidelines and MMWR reports that drove policy.

By 2000, the CDC and PAHO determined measles transmission was eliminated. Occasional imported outbreaks still fizzled out thanks to herd immunity, which kicks in when roughly 95% of a community is immunized. After the 2015 Disney parks outbreak in California, Congress treated roughly 125 cases as an emergency, summoning Schuchat to testify. "Vaccination wasn't a partisan issue," she recalled. "This was about problem-solving."

Why did this outbreak play out differently?

Just after President Trump took office in 2025, an outbreak exploded in West Texas. Within seven months it became the largest since 1992, spread to Mexico and at least three other states, sickened more than 4,500 people across the two countries, and killed at least 16. Instead of clear pro-vaccine messaging, Kennedy falsely claimed on Fox News that measles vaccines lead to "deaths every year."

Congress held no hearing, and HHS didn't send funds until the Texas emergency had subsided. Multiple CDC officials, speaking anonymously because they feared retaliation, said political appointees delayed or blocked MMWR articles. "Measles reports from West Texas and New Mexico were intentionally shelved," one agency scientist said. Hilliard called the suppression suggestion "false" and noted Kennedy and the CDC provided approximately $100 million in additional outbreak funding.

The MMWR still hasn't published detailed reports on large outbreaks in South Carolina, Utah, and Pennsylvania. One delayed study of 60 hospitalized West Texas patients found two needed intubation and mechanical ventilation, and a baby born to a mother with measles suffered dangerous brain swelling.

Kennedy also replaced vaccine experts on a CDC advisory panel with fringe researchers holding anti-vaccine views, and personally instructed the CDC to alter a webpage stating vaccines do not cause autism. "Having top leadership disseminating rumors, disinformation and flat-out falsehoods has been unforgivable," Schuchat said.

Regaining elimination status requires current outbreaks to end and future ones to stop spreading within a year, said microbiologist and former CDC official Paul Rota. With outbreaks expanding in several states, that moment isn't close. "Bigger fires create more embers, and any one of those embers can seed another fire," he said.