Flu activity continues to climb across the US with at least 11 million cases: CDC
An Influenza Vaccine is prepared for a patient on September 12, 2025, in Coral Gables, Florida. Joe Raedle/Getty Images
(ATLANTA) — Flu activity is continuing to climb across the U.S. as hospitalizations rise, according to newly released data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC estimates there have been 120,000 hospitalizations so far this season, a 38.8% increase from the prior week.
Additionally, the CDC says there have been at least 11 million illnesses and 5,000 deaths due to flu so far this season.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
A box of biles for Measles Vaccinations offered by Harris Public Health is photographed on Saturday, April 5, 2025 in Houston. (Raquel Natalicchio/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — The U.S. has surpassed 2,000 measles cases for the first time in more than 30 years, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
As of Dec. 23, a total of 2,012 cases have been reported in the U.S. Of those cases, 24 were reported among international visitors to the U.S.
States with confirmed cases include Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
The last time the U.S. recorded more than 2,000 cases occurred in 1992, when there were 2,126 confirmed infections over the course of a year, CDC data shows.
The CDC says 11% of measles patients in the U.S. this year have been hospitalized, over half of whom are under age 19.
Among the nationally confirmed cases, the CDC says about 93% are among people who are unvaccinated or whose vaccination status is unknown.
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.
There have been 50 outbreaks reported across the U.S. in 2025, CDC data shows. By comparison, 16 outbreaks were reported during 2024.
South Carolinas department of public heath reports that 179 cases have been confirmed as of Dec. 30 with the most cases (176) around Spartanburg County, which sits on the border with North Carolina.
Over the course of the outbreak, hundreds of students have been forced to quarantine at home due to outbreaks at their schools.
The CDC currently recommends that 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 says.
However, CDC 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 the previous school year and the 95.2% seen in the 2019-2020 school year, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
(NEW YORK) — From robotic surgery performed 7,000 miles away to the first blood test to help diagnose Alzheimer’s disease, 2025 has been a year full of medical breakthroughs.
Scientists discovered a brain implant to give some patients back their independence, prevented others from needing to take opioids and made a discovery that could help solve the organ shortage crisis.
Here are seven of the biggest innovations in the health and science space this year.
ALS patient is 1st to control iPad by thought with implantable brain sensor
A patient with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) became the first person in the world to control an iPad entirely by thought, neurotech company Synchron announced earlier this year.
The patient, Mark Jackson, from western Pennsylvania, controls the tablet without using his hands or voice command but rather with an implantable brain-computer interface (BCI) that translates his thoughts into actions.
At the time, Jackson told ABC News he doesn’t have use of his arms so the BCI helps him watch TV shows, listen to audiobooks, browse social media and send text messages to his children.
BCIs are sensors implanted in the brain and translate brain signals into actions outside of the body. The BCI that Jackson is using was developed by the company Synchron, which involves a device implanted into one of the veins within the brain in a minimally invasive procedure.
“This is really an exciting field, because I think the opportunities are boundless,” Dr. Leah Croll, a neurologist at Maimonides Medical Center in New York City, told ABC News. “I think that we’re going to see, moving forward, not only using BCIs to control other electronic devices, but also using them to give patients back movement, to give patients back language, really bodily functions that they weren’t able to do after whatever neurologic insult happened to them.”
Croll said it’s important, going forward, to consider legal and ethical considerations such as privacy and data storage.
She also encouraged more research and clinical trials to generate data on how patients can be protected in both research and real-world settings.
“There’s so much we haven’t figured out legally and ethically when it comes to storing personal, private data from your brain, and how is that used, and how do we manage that responsibly,” she said. “There’s a lot of bio-ethical minds at work as to how we deal with this issue and how do we make it so that a patient isn’t sort of signing away the rights to their entire brain and inner world and manage something responsibly for them that’s helpful and not harmful.”
First pill for obstructive sleep apnea may be around the corner
The first oral pill for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) could soon be available after a late-clinical showed positive results, according to pharmaceutical company Apnimed Inc.
The drug, AD109, showed “clinically meaningful and statistically significant reductions” in airway obstruction after 26 weeks, the company said in a press release in July.
OSA is a sleep disorder in which the airways become narrowed or blocked while sleeping, causing breathing to pause.
The investigational once-daily pill is a neuromuscular modulator that stabilizes upper airway muscles and prevents them collapsing, improving oxygenation.
OSA patients treated with the medication saw a nearly 50% reduction in the severity from baseline at week 26, compared to 6.8% of those in the placebo group.
The reduction was “significant” at the end of the study period, which concluded at 51 weeks. At the end of the trial, nearly 23% of participants saw “complete disease control.”
More recent trial data published in October found that a meaningful number of patients achieved complete disease control and experienced significant improvements in oxygenation measures.
First non-opioid medication in more than 20 years approved by FDA
Earlier this year, the FDA approved a new type of non-opioid pain medication to treat moderate to severe acute pain, the first of its kind on more than 20 years.
Suzetrigine, also known by the brand name, Journavx, is manufactured by biotech company Vertex Pharmaceuticals and doesn’t have addictive properties, unlike opioids often used for this type of pain.
“It’s significant in light of all the concerns about the opioid epidemic and addiction substance use disorder,” Dr. Jianguo Cheng, a professor of anesthesiology and medical director of the Cleveland Clinic Consortium for Pain at Cleveland Clinic, told ABC News.
In two clinical trials, tested on adults between ages 18 and 80, Journavx was found to reduce moderate to severe acute pain for adults from baseline by about 50% in 48 hours.
The average time to meaningful pain relief ranged from two to four hours, compared to eight hours in the placebo group, according to the trial.
Cheng, who was not involved in the clinical trials, said the studies demonstrated efficacy of the drug not compared to not only placebo, but also to weak opioids.
“Its efficacy is as good as a weak opioid. So why that is important?” Cheng said. “Because not all patients need opioids, and not all patients need a strong opioid. … If most of them do need a weak opioid, and if this can replace the weak opioid, that can be a big deal.”
Although gene-edited pig kidneys have been seen as a way to help ease the shortage of organs available for those on transplant waiting lists, many of the organs have been rejected not long after transplant surgery.
“Until 2021, we had never put one of these gene-edited pig organs into a human … so it was a bit of a mystery when we started doing the pig-to-human transplants, about what we were going to encounter,” Dr. Robert Montgomery, director of the NYU Langone Transplant Institute, told ABC News.
Last month, a team at NYU Langone Health published a study in which they discovered immune reactions that may explain why these organs get rejected.
The team collected two months of data from a patient who was brain dead and had a genetically engineered pig kidney transplanted into them. The family had donated the patient’s body to science.
The team learned that pig organs were being rejected due to an immune system reaction from specific antibodies — which recognize and attach themselves to foreign substances so they can be removed from the body — and from T cells, which are white blood cells that help the body fight off germs and other unfamiliar invaders.
‘So you have this very coordinated immune response that involves antibodies and white cells, and it seems to happen somewhere between two and four weeks after the transplant,” said Montgomery, lead author of the study. “Now the good news on that front is that we can detect when it’s coming before rejection happens, and we can begin to respond, and we have very good therapeutics that can block the rejection and prevent it from causing damage.”
After rejection, the team used an FDA-approved drug combination to successfully reverse it, with no signs of permanent damage or reduced kidney function.
In a second study, Montgomery and his team looked at the body’s immune response to the pig organ in greater detail. By measuring levels of biomarkers in the blood, they were able to spot an attack up to five days before it would be visible in bodily tissue.
Montgomery said the findings could lead to a future where gene-edited pig organs are a realistic alternative to human organs.
“The pig organ can really replace a human organ and do all the things that a human organ can do, and it’s really just a matter of overcoming the immunosuppression and preventing rejection,” he said. “I think it’s going to happen … and people will be receiving xenotransplants on a regular basis. It’s going to be normalized, and it’s going to be something that will benefit thousands, first, and then millions of people around the world.”
FDA clears 1st blood test to help diagnose Alzheimer’s disease
In May, the FDA cleared the first blood test to help diagnose Alzheimer’s disease.
The test, manufactured by Fujirebio Diagnostics, is for those aged 55 and older who are already exhibiting signs and symptoms of the disease, according to the federal health agency.
The new blood test works by measuring the ratio of two proteins — pTau217 and β-amyloid 1-42 — which are found in human plasma, a component of blood. That ratio is then linked to the presence or absence of amyloid plaques in the brain to determine whether a patient is showing signs of Alzheimer’s disease.
In a clinical study, more than 91% of nearly 500 cognitively impaired patients who tested positive on the blood test had their results confirmed by other diagnostic tools.
“Essentially, it does provide a first quantitative measure of an Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis,” Dr. Jeffrey Savas, an associate professor in the department of neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, told ABC News. “This is very important to identify patients which could be good candidates for some of the emerging therapeutics.
Savas said the test is rapid, highly accurate and less expensive or invasive compared to previous diagnostic tests.
Because many Alzheimer’s patients need to wait months to see a specialist, the test can allow primary care providers to start the diagnostic process.
“Many neurological research centers have huge backlogs of patients, and there’s not enough physicians or nurses to really see the patients in a timely manner,” Savas said.
“Having this quick diagnostic test, which could be taken in other medical settings, should pave the way for quicker, more effective opportunities and chances for being treated in a timely manner.”
In October, the FDA cleared a second blood-based test called Elecsys pTau181, made by Roche.
Groundbreaking remote robotic surgery
A patient living in Angola with prostate cancer underwent surgery this year to cut the cancer out, but the doctor performing the surgery was 7,000 miles away in Orlando, Florida.
The patient was the first in a groundbreaking human clinical trial approved by the FDA to test transcontinental robotic telesurgery.
A team at OrlandoHealth operated on the patient via a multimillion-dollar robot with enhanced visuals and nimble controls.
Using a robot allows for the procedure to be less invasive, more precise and typically comes with a faster recovery time.
The team has said underserved areas in the U.S. and around the world could benefit from the technology by having a surgeon perform an operation even if they are not nearby.
1st-ever gene fix for rare deadly disease saves baby’s life
A baby with a rare and life-threatening metabolic disorder underwent a personalized treatment involving a first-of-its-kind type of gene-editing.
KJ Muldoon was diagnosed as a newborn with carbamoyl-phosphate synthetase 1 deficiency as a newborn. The disorder affects a bodily cycle that causes deadly levels of ammonia to build up in the blood, which can lead to severe and permanent brain damage.
If left untreated, it will typically result in the death of the patient, according to the National Organization for Rare Disorders.
The treatment for KJ involved the powerful gene-editing tool CRISPR, which allows scientists to precisely slice and repair faulty genes. Using CRISPR, the team was able to create a treatment tailored to the baby’s specific genetic mutation.
In June, KJ went home after spending the majority of his life at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Earlier this month, he reached a big milestone: taking his first steps ahead of Christmas.
Boxes and vials of the Measles, Mumps, Rubella Virus Vaccine at a vaccine clinic put on by Lubbock Public Health Department on March 1, 2025 in Lubbock, Texas. Jan Sonnenmair/Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — As measles continues to spread across the U.S., with outbreaks popping up around the country, public health experts have been stressing the importance of getting vaccinated to stop the spread of disease.
This has involved local doctors and health department workers going into outbreak areas to offer the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine.
The MMR vaccine is typically a two-dose series given first at 12-15 months old and again at 4-6 years of age. An extra dose can be given as early 6 months old in high-risk circumstances, including during a measles outbreak.
Health experts working in and near measles outbreaks told ABC News that vaccine acceptance has been mixed among these communities, with some people begging to get their kids vaccinated early, while others still refuse an immunization.
“[Measles] can spread so quickly amongst that unvaccinated population,” Dr. Christopher Lombardozzi, chief medical officer at Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System, told ABC News. “And if the number of people who remain unvaccinated stays large, then we could have a real problem, not just this year, but in years to come.”
Vaccine hesitancy in outbreak areas
The upstate region of South Carolina is experiencing a surge in measles cases amid the ongoing outbreak.
The South Carolina Department of Public Health (DPH) reported 223 new cases over the last week, bringing the total number of cases in the outbreak to 434 since October, with over 400 people currently in quarantine due to exposure. Spartanburg County, which borders North Carolina, is currently the epicenter of the outbreak.
A spokesperson for Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System told ABC News that, as of Jan. 9, there have been 77 confirmed measles cases across the system since the outbreak began.
Lombardozzi said the health care system has seen some increased vaccine uptake, but not as much as they hoped for.
“We certainly have had some more uptake of vaccine in the last six months or so, since the outbreak started here in South Carolina, and I’m happy for that,” Lombardozzi said. “I would love to see a higher uptake. There is still quite a bit of vaccine hesitancy around here, and I think it’s unwarranted.”
Lombardozzi added that addressing vaccine hesitancy takes time and support.
“We try to support people, meet them where they are, and hopefully they will change their mind if they’ve been vaccine hesitant for a while,” he said.
Lombardozzi worries that without increasing immunizations, the negative effects could ripple for years.
In a press conference on Wednesday, Dr. Linda Bell, state epidemiologist and health program branch director for the South Carolina DPH, said the lack of vaccine acceptance amid the growing outbreak has been “disappointing.”
Bell said vaccines could have helped prevent a majority of cases, adding, “We have an opportunity to prevent further cases, if people can adopt these available tools and help us stop this outbreak sooner rather than later.”
As of Tuesday, another ongoing outbreak in Utah surpassed 200 measles cases since it began in June of last year. The southwest region of Utah has reported 147 of those cases, which equates to a rate of 25.8 cases per 100,000 people in that region.
David Heaton, public information officer at the Southwest Utah Department of Public Health, told ABC News that cases in southwest Utah and further north have been linked to the same measles virus that spread in Texas and New Mexico last year.
Heaton worries that measles will soon be declared endemic again, ending the decades-long elimination status in the U.S.
“That’s kind of a discouraging threshold that we’re getting closer to. I think [the loss of elimination status] could be recovered, but it could take a couple of years at least,” Heaton said.
In the Southwest region, vaccine acceptance has been highest among people who were on the fence or those who accidentally missed vaccines, but those with strong beliefs against vaccines have been “fairly immovable,” Heaton added.
“We’re just seeing the attitude of, ‘I choose not to get vaccinated. I don’t agree with vaccinations, and I’m not going to do it. I don’t feel the risk is high enough to get the vaccine,'” he said.
Some success in vaccine uptake
But there have been examples of success. Last year, during a large outbreak from February to September, the New Mexico Department of Health (NMDOH) reported that MMR doses administered were nearly 50% higher than the year prior by October.
The largest gains were due to adult vaccination that increased by about 230% in October 2025 compared to October 2024. Children receiving the MMR shot only increased by about 10% compared to that time the previous year.
Andrea Romero, immunization program section manager at NMDOH, told ABC News communication was key during the outbreak. Romero said most of the adults who got vaccinated did so because they were unsure of their vaccination status and felt a strong sense of duty to get the shot, not just to protect themselves but to protect their community.
“When they know that they’re making a difference, it matters,” Romero said. “Every time I take that opportunity [to say], ‘Thank you for being a great community and your response, caring about yourself, your family, your neighbor,’ but it means a lot because it’s their efforts. It was their response that made the difference.”
NMDOH data shared with ABC News shows that 384 children with a vaccine exemption on file received at least one MMR shot between Jan. 13, 2025 and Jan. 13, 2026. This suggests parents of these children changed their minds about the vaccine around the time of New Mexico’s measles outbreak, according to health department officials.
During that same timeframe, at least one MMR dose was the only immunization on record for 189 children in the state, the data shows.
Fears of further measles spread
Doctors near outbreak regions are also experiencing the effects of fears and questions about measles and vaccination from their community.
Dr. Deborah Greenhouse, a spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics and pediatrician in South Carolina, told ABC News that her community hasn’t had a measles case yet, but parents and healthcare providers are increasingly concerned.
“As we all know, and as my patients know, measles virus does not respect county borders, so, as the numbers continue to rise, the likelihood that we start seeing cases here in the midlands of South Carolina increases dramatically,” Greenhouse said.
On Tuesday, health officials announced there was a measles exposure on Jan. 2 in the midlands region at the South Carolina State Museum in Columbia.
“If more families decline the vaccines, our vaccination rates drop and we become an open target, essentially a sitting duck for an outbreak, much like the Spartanburg area,” Greenhouse said.
In her experience, building a foundation of trust has been essential for vaccine acceptance.
“They know me, they trust me,” Greenhouse said. “They know that as a pediatrician, I have no interest here other than protecting the best interests of their children and their family.”
She went on, “Families that I’ve known for years, who I have a very strong relationship with, are coming in and asking for every vaccine that they can get, and asking to get the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine early, because they’re very concerned about their children being exposed to measles and not being protected.”
Greenhouse said trying to build trust among families has been particularly challenging amid changing guidance from federal health agencies and widespread misinformation.
“Unfortunately, some of the awful sources right now are people that you used to think you could trust and, as a new parent, I totally understand why it would be incredibly difficult to be able to figure out right now,” Greenhouse said.
Despite changing guidance and misinformation, doctors say the science hasn’t changed, and vaccines remain safe and effective.
“Amongst the medical community, you’re not going to get much disagreement that the vaccines are safe and that they’re effective,” Lombardozzi said. “The message is, go get your kids their shots if it’s time to get their shots. We certainly encourage folks to go talk to your pediatrician, go talk to your doctor.”
Jade A. Cobern, MD, MPH, is a practicing physician, board-certified in pediatrics and general preventive medicine, and is a medical fellow of the ABC News Medical Unit.
