US nears 1,000 measles cases with infections confirmed in 26 states: CDC

(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.

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(NEW YORK) — Children who miss early vaccinations are far more likely to miss the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine by age 2, a new study found.

The findings come as the U.S. recently 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 (CDC).

CDC data shows that MMR vaccination declined over the last several years, but the authors say that factors linked to delayed or missed vaccination since the COVID-19 pandemic have not been well studied.

For the new study, published Friday in the journal JAMA Network Open, the team looked data from Truevata, an electronic health records database that includes several U.S. health care systems.

Participants included more than 321,000 children who received routine care within the first two months, first year and second year of life between Jan. 1, 2018 and April 30, 2025.

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.

Most children during the study period received the MMR vaccine on time, with 78.4% doing so.

About 13.9% of children had delayed vaccination, 1% received the MMR vaccine early and 6.7% did not receive the MMR vaccine by age 2, according to the study.

The strongest predictors for no MMR vaccination was delay in receiving the recommended 2-month and 4-month vaccines, the study noted.

These early vaccines included diphtheria, tetanus, and acellular pertussis (DTaP); Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib); pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV); and the inactivated poliovirus vaccines (IPV).

Nina Masters, lead author of the study and senior applied research scientist at Truveta, told ABC News that it’s not surprising children who miss early vaccines also miss later vaccines, but it highlights that some parents become vaccine hesitant when their children are young.

“This also means the opportunity for intervention to engage parents and provide more education about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines has to happen very early,” she said. “This may be challenging as parents may have yet had the time to forge a strong bond with their child’s pediatrician, but the study highlights the importance of pediatric providers having vaccination discussions and building trust as early as possible with parents.”

Results from the study showed that those who received their 2-month vaccines on time were seven times more likely to get the MMR vaccine.  

The team found that the percentage of children who received the MMR vaccine on time changed over the study period, increasing from 75.6% in 2018 to 79.9% in 2021, and then falling to 76.9% in 2024.

This decrease between 2021 and 2024 was associated with an increase in the percentage of children who did not receive the MMR vaccine by age 2, increasing from 5.3% in 2020 to 7.7% in 2024, according to the study.

Children who were more likely to be unvaccinated for the MMR shot by age 2 were boys, and white and non-Hispanic or Latino, the study found.

Rural residence slightly increased the risk of no MMR vaccination, even among children receiving routine care, according to the study.

The study only included children with regular access to care, so real-world vaccination delays may be worse in the broader U.S. population, the team noted.

The authors added that these results point to increased vaccine hesitancy or unmeasured access challenges, highlighting the importance of timely intervention so children are less likely to delay or miss vaccination.

Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, who was not involved in the study, said the findings have major public health implications because there are questions about whether the U.S. will retain its measles elimination status and increasing vaccination is “the way out of this problem.”

“If you want to live in a society where measles is a problem of the past, where we don’t have to think about it, where schools don’t have to come up with contingency plans, where we don’t have children unnecessarily dying from measles, then that’s a reason to get the vaccine,” he told ABC News.

Adalja added that vaccination doesn’t just protect the individual against infection, but it also has a community benefit.

“The higher the vaccination level is in a given community, the more resilient that community will be to those infectious diseases,” he said. “And if you’re someone that’s immunocompromised, you may want to live in to live in an area that has high vaccination rates because you are at higher risk, and if you’re in a high vaccination area, there’s going to be a lowering of that risk because of the community level immunity that exists in that area.”

Crystal Richards, MD, MS is a pediatric resident doctor at New-York Presbyterian Hospital Columbia University Medical Center and a member of the ABC News Medical Unit.

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(NEW YORK) — Measles cases have topped 1,000 in the United States for the third time in 26 years.

At least 154 new measles cases have been confirmed in the last week for a total of 1,136, according to updated data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

So far this year, cases have been confirmed in 27 states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, 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 92% of cases are among people who are unvaccinated or whose vaccination status is unknown, CDC data shows.

Meanwhile, 4% 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 979 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. Before that, the last time measles cases rose above 1,000 was 2019 — CDC data showed 1,274 that year. Recorded cases dropped to a low of 13 in 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.

It also marked the first U.S. deaths recorded from measles in a decade, two among school-aged unvaccinated children in Texas and a third of an unvaccinated adult in New Mexico.

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, according to the CDC.

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.

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