Before immunization was widely available in the United States, there were between three and four million cases of measles each year. After immunization became available, the number of measles cases in the U.S. dropped to a then record-low of just 86 cases being reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for the year 2000.

Fast forward to the year 2025 and the United States currently has the highest number of measles cases since the disease was virtually “eliminated” in the country in the year 2000, and we’re only halfway through the year.

The current measles outbreak in the United States began in Gaines County, Texas where nearly 1 in 5 incoming kindergartners in the 2023-24 school year did not get the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, which when taken in two doses, is 97% effective at preventing the disease. Now, there have been a total of 27 outbreaks in 38 states.

Measles cases in the U.S. reach highest number in 33 years

As of July 1, a total of 1,267 confirmed measles cases have been reported to the CDC, however, the CDC notes that it “is aware of probable measles cases being reported by jurisdictions,” and that number only “includes confirmed cases.” Hundreds of people are suspected to have been infected, but have gone untested or unreported.

Johns Hopkins University Center for Outbreak Response Innovation has the number of confirmed cases in the United States at 1,285 – the most since 1992. So far, two children in Texas and an adult in New Mexico have died as a result of measles. All three were unvaccinated.

The Dallas Morning News reported on Tuesday that the epicenter of Texas’ outbreak, Gaines County, no longer has ongoing measles transmission.

Experts weigh in

However, Dr. Paul Offit, director of the vaccine education center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told the Guardian, “When you talk to people on the ground, you get the sense that this outbreak has been severely underestimated.”

He added that because of the virtual eradication of measles in the United States over the past two-plus decades, “People don’t remember how sick this virus can make you – or how dead it can make you.”

Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccine expert and dean for the national school of tropical medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, also told the Guardian, “The number of new cases has slowed down, but I don’t think there’s any reason to suggest this will be our last. It’s a very dark epidemic that never had to happen.”

Currently, the CDC, which sets the nation’s vaccine policy, has no director. Meanwhile, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been promoting unproven treatments for measles and the cuts made by the Trump Administration have threatened the free vaccine federal program for children.

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