(NEW YORK) — At least 177 new measles cases have been reported in the U.S., according to newly updated data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A total of 910 infections have been confirmed in 24 states including Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
A view of the Dutch-flagged vessel MV Hondius is seen navigating the Atlantic Ocean near Saint Helena Island on April 24, 2026. (Emin Yogurtcuoglu/Anadolu via Getty Images)
(LONDON) — An epidemiologist from the World Health Organization (WHO) said Thursday that the suspected hantavirus cluster aboard a cruise ship is not the beginning of another COVID-19 pandemic.
Eight cases are currently being reported by the WHO, including five laboratory-confirmed cases and three suspected cases. Of those eight cases, three have died.
Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, an infectious disease epidemiologist and acting director of epidemic and pandemic management at the WHO, was asked during a press conference what the difference was between this cluster and the early days of the COVID pandemic.
“I want to be unequivocal here. This is not SARS-CoV-2. This is not the start of a COVID pandemic. This is an outbreak that we see on a ship,” Van Kerkhove said.
Van Kerkhove explained that hantavirus doesn’t spread in the same way that coronaviruses do, but rather through “close, intimate contact.” Most hantaviruses don’t transmit from person to person.
“The actions that are being taken on board [the ship] are precautionary to prevent any onward spread,” she added.
There appears to be one confirmed case and two suspected cases that have not been added to the WHO’s official count yet.
Officials told ABC News a female individual, who was on a KLM flight with the Dutch female patient who later died, developed symptoms and was admitted to a hospital. Leiden University Medical Centre in the Netherlands confirmed on Thursday that the female patient has hantavirus and is receiving care.
Additionally, two Singapore residents who were on board the ship are currently being monitored. Singapore’s Communicable Diseases Agency said it was notified of the individuals on May 4 and May 5.
“They have been isolated at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases, where they are being tested for hantavirus. The risk to the general public in Singapore is currently low,” the agency said.
The agency added that test results are pending, with one resident having a runny nose and the other is asymptomatic.
Three deaths have been recorded so far, including a married Dutch couple. The 70-year-old male patient died on April 11, and his body was taken off the ship on the island of St. Helena on April 24. His 69-year-old wife disembarked on the same day, and her health rapidly deteriorated. She died at an emergency department in South Africa on April 26.
A third passenger, a German woman, presented with pneumonia symptoms starting on April 28, according to the WHO. The woman died on May 2 from causes not yet known, according to Oceanwide Expeditions, which operates the cruise ship.
The WHO said 29 people disembarked on St. Helena on the same day that the body of the Dutch male patient and his wife disembarked.
They traveled to 12 countries: Canada, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Great Britain, St. Kitts and Nevis, Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, Sweden, Turkey and the United States.
The disembarked guests have all been contacted by Oceanwide Expeditions. In the U.S., local authorities in three states — Arizona, Georgia and California — are monitoring the disembarked passengers and are conducting contact tracing, None have shown signs of illness at this time.
Anais Legend, technical lead for viral hemorrhagic fevers at WHO, said during the press conference on Thursday that “step-by-step guidance is being developed” for the disembarked passengers and that the WHO is coordinating with national authorities.
Anyone with any signs of symptoms will be isolated while other passengers have their risk exposure evaluated.
Public health experts said they expected a more robust response from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (DC) and the National Institutes of Health.
“The CDC would typically be asked by WHO or by a country to help in technical assistance,” Dr. Carlos del Rio, an H. Cliff Sauls distinguished professor of medicine at the Emory University School of Medicine, told reporters on Thursday.
Typically, CDC teams would be deployed to an area, he said, and the teams would perform contact tracing and interviews and conduct an outbreak investigation.
“I would envision by now, many, many days ago, we would have seen a team from CDC deployed to the area,” he added.
Dr. Jeanna Marrazzo, CEO of the IDSA, added that she would have expected a CDC press briefing, an alert from the agency’s Health Alert Network or information from the NIH on potential treatments in the pipeline that could receive emergency use authorization to help treat hantavirus patients.
Marrazzo said she is not aware that conservations about potential therpaies at NIH aren’t happening but that it “doesn’t give me a lot of assurance or reassurance that we are not hearing any of that.”
The WHO said during Thursday’s press briefing that the U.S. is coordinating with the global health agency in a technical capacity.
Because the cluster is limited and confined to a cruise ship, the “idea of sending messages across the world and panicking everyone is not required,” said Dr. Abdirahman Mahmoud, director of the WHO’s health emergency alert and response operations.
He added that the WHO is “informally” aware that contact tracing has been done of the U.S. passengers who disembarked last month and are back home.
Kids eating lunch at school (Tetra Images/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — As President Donald Trump’s administration touts its new federal dietary guidelines, experts and officials suggest there’s a long road ahead before America’s students have healthier school meals.
With the Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services partnering to address chronic disease — aiming to place whole, nutrient-dense food at the center of diets — the administration believes it has taken a major step toward solving America’s youth health crises.
From Secretaries Brooke Rollins and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary, there’s a full-scale push to make school meals healthier by next school year, but the USDA’s former Food and Nutrition Service Administrator Cindy Long said their changes won’t happen “overnight.”
Long — who was USDA’s Deputy Administrator for Child Nutrition under former President Barack Obama and during President Donald Trump’s first term — told ABC News the Healthy-Hunger Free Kids Act, which is the school meals bill that was signed into law in 2010, ignited a shift to healthier school meals over a decade ago.
Celebrating the newest dietary guidelines, the foundation of dozens of federal feeding programs, including school meals, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has said that her agency is submitting its proposed school meals rule by mid-spring. Meanwhile, implementing the meals in U.S. classrooms will see delays after the updated regulations, some health policy experts noted.
Dr. David Ludwig, a professor of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, suggested the changes may take a while both in practice and culture.
“We have to address this on many levels,” Ludwig told ABC News, adding, “First, improving the guidelines that regulate food quality in schools. That’s foundational.”
Ludwig echoed the Trump administration’s 2025-2030 guidelines, which are updated every five years, emphasizing that new school meal ingredients must reduce sugar and other processed carbohydrates and increase whole foods.
“Layer two is adequate funding so that not only healthful but delicious foods can be prepared,” he said, adding, “It’s critical for children to understand that we don’t want to raise a generation that thinks healthy foods are going to be just bland.”
Updates will be made through formal rulemaking, the government’s multi-step process that includes opportunities for public comment, to ensure USDA supports children’s access to nutritious, high-quality meals at school, according to a USDA spokesperson.
However, Long told ABC News that some of the President Joe Biden administration’s changes to reduce added sugar and sodium to school meals are still being implemented.
“You can’t change this enormous system with 100,000 schools operating overnight,” she said, adding “You’ve got to allow time for people to be successful, for people to change menus, for them to procure the right products, for industry to be able to produce products that will help them bring down the sodium, bring down the added sugar etc.”
White House Senior Advisor Calley Means told ABC News there will be a “flurry” of regulation changes this year that will bolster kids’ meals at school. He bemoaned critics’ concerns that the administration lacks the funding to make the necessary changes.
“The government spends hundreds of billions of dollars on food procurement,” he said, adding, “We do not have a budget issue. There’s been a political will problem that President Trump and Bobby Kennedy and Brooke Rollins have solved. There’s care about this issue. We’re going to be driving common sense solutions.”
Parental control over school meals
University of Illinois Professor of Nutrition Dr. Donald Layman believes promoting healthier meal options — like increased protein and the subtraction of ultra-processed foods — signals a “total sea change” for parents.
“I think it gives parents a different structure,” he told ABC News, adding, “They’ve been told that, well, eggs were bad for you, or that meats were bad for you, and they’re left not knowing what to give their kids.”
“I’ve always felt that the issue was, how do we empower parents to do what they know is right, but they’ve been told they shouldn’t do,” Layman added.
Hilary Boynton — a California mom and former head of nutrition services at her kids’ school — said, “people are starting to recognize that they have agency over their own health and [they can] be empowered by that.”
In Summer Barrett’s home state of West Virginia, a mom who says she’s a part of the Make America Healthy Again Movement, said she’s grown frustrated with school meals containing excess amounts of sugar in Dunkin’ Stix Donuts breakfasts.
“You’re giving them 52 grams of sugar, and then you send them to class and you wonder, ‘oh, why can’t you sit still,’” Barrett said. “Why can’t you learn? Why can’t you focus?” Well, cause you just jacked them up on more sugar than they should have in an entire day,” she added.
The new guidelines may signal that school meal changes are to come, thanks to MAHA moms like Barrett who have been “hungry for this nutrition science for a long time,” according to FDA Commissioner Makary. Makary and Kennedy have already started visiting schools to help promote programs that serve scratch-cooked meals with Whole Foods like fruits and vegetables.
Meanwhile, Cindy Long told ABC that the administration’s changes will only build on prior policy wins.
“I’m hoping that this will just continue on the path of, sort of, continuing to make school meals stronger and stronger,” she said.
A sign outside a mobile clinic offering measles and flu vaccinations on February 6, 2026 in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Sean Rayford/Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — The U.S. is close to reaching at least 1,000 measles cases for the third time in eight years.
At least 72 new measles cases have been confirmed in the last week, according to updated data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
So far this year, there have been total of 982 cases in 26 states, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.
Just six measles cases were reported among international travelers so far this year, according to CDC data.
About 94% of cases are among people who are unvaccinated or whose vaccination status is unknown, the CDC said.
Meanwhile, 3% of cases are among those who have received just one dose of the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine and 4% of cases are among those who received the recommended two doses, according to the CDC.
The current measles situation in the U.S. is partly being driven by a large outbreak in South Carolina that began last year, with 962 cases recorded as of Friday, according to state health officials.
Last year, the U.S. recorded 2,281 measles cases, which is the highest number of national cases in 33 years, according to the CDC.
The CDC currently recommends people receive two doses of the MMR vaccine, the first at ages 12 to 15 months and the second between 4 and 6 years old. One dose is 93% effective, and two doses are 97% effective against measles, the CDC said.
However, federal data shows vaccination rates have been lagging in recent years. During the 2024-2025 school year, 92.5% of kindergartners received the MMR vaccine, according to data. This is lower than the 92.7% seen in the previous school year and the 95.2% seen in the 2019-2020 school year, before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Last month marked one year since a measles outbreak began in West Texas, with infections soon spreading to neighboring counties and other states.
Public health experts previously told ABC News that if cases in other states are found to be linked to the cases in Texas, it would mean the virus has been spreading for a year, which could lead to a loss of elimination status.
