WASHINGTON — The United States has lost the measles elimination status it held for 26 years, after health officials concluded the virus has been spreading continuously in the country for more than a year, according to reports published Friday and Saturday.
The Wall Street Journal first reported that the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) has revoked the designation, citing people familiar with the matter. Reuters reported the same decision on Friday, and CNN reported that an independent commission of experts that reports to the PAHO director determined the United States no longer qualified as having eliminated measles, according to a source close to the process.
PAHO did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters. KFF Health News, whose researchers spoke with people with direct knowledge of the deliberations, reported Saturday that PAHO had planned a public announcement on Nov. 17.
Elimination never meant zero cases. It meant the country had stopped the virus from spreading on its own, year after year. A country loses the status when the same strain of measles passes from person to person for at least 12 months without a break, and the commission reviewed epidemiological and laboratory evidence, including evidence submitted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to decide whether that had happened in the United States.
The numbers behind the decision are stark. More than 5,400 measles cases have been reported in the United States this year, the highest number since 1991, CNN reported. Nearly all of them were in people who had not received the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine or whose vaccination status was unknown, and about 1 in 9 patients was hospitalized, according to the CDC. At least 10 people have died this year, according to state reports cited by CNN, and Reuters reported that some 7,500 people have been infected and 13 have died since 2025.
Utah showed how the virus got its foothold back. Scientists with the state’s public health laboratory found the same strain of measles had been circulating there for more than a year, accounting for more than 95% of cases in the state and causing more than 600 cases between June 2025 and June 2026, CNN reported. Sustained outbreaks have also hit South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and New York.
“Measles elimination is a vital sign for our public health system. It shows cracks in our foundation. Losing elimination status means that we are less prepared as a nation to address infectious and noninfectious disease challenges”
Dr. Peter Hotez, co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, put it more bluntly. “Basically, measles is back,” he told CNN.
The United States first achieved elimination status in 2000, after decades of vaccination campaigns. Two doses of the measles vaccine provide 97% protection against the virus, and health officials say transmission stops when about 95% of a population is vaccinated, which also protects people who cannot receive the shot.
The federal government pushed back on blame for the reversal. A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, Emily Hilliard, attributed the resurgence of measles to vaccination gaps that opened years before this administration, KFF Health News reported, and said Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the CDC have provided approximately $100 million in additional funding to respond to outbreaks.
“The President and the Secretary have repeatedly encouraged measles vaccination, coordinated with states, and facilitated the deployment of vaccine doses across the country,” White House spokesperson Allison Schuster wrote in an email to KFF Health News.
Getting the status back will take time. To regain elimination status, the United States must halt the continuing spread of the virus for at least 12 months, and experts quoted by CNN said falling vaccination rates and growing nonmedical exemptions in schools will make that a difficult task.