- A top U.S. health official wants people who have not had the measles vaccine to get it.
- Measles cases are reported in all but six states amid declining vaccination rates.
- The CDC warns the nation could lose its measles-free status if the outbreaks continue.
Dr. Mehmet Oz wants Americans who have not gotten a vaccine against measles to do so, as cases are spreading and have been found in all but six states.
“Take the vaccine, please,” said Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, during a Sunday interview on CNN. “We have a solution for our problem. Not all illnesses are equally dangerous, and not all people are equally susceptible to those illnesses. But measles is one you should get your vaccine.“
Measles is a highly contagious viral illness that most people recover from, but complications — especially for the very young and older adults — can be serious, even deadly. Those complications can include pneumonia and swelling in the brain. It’s a miserable illness that features fever, cough, runny nose, red eyes and a rash.
The illness is spread easily because it can linger in the air for hours after someone who has been infected coughs or sneezes. So people can enter an area without even knowing they risk infection.
As Deseret News earlier reported, there’s a risk that the United States will lose its measles-free status, should outbreaks last more than a year. Measles was, for the most part, eliminated in the U.S. in 2000, although there have been sporadic cases. Since 2025 began — and amid a decline in the share of people choosing to be vaccinated against the highly contagious illness — at least 2,600 cases have been confirmed.
The vast majority of those cases have been in people who are not vaccinated, according to health officials.
As of Feb. 5, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 733 cases of measles have been confirmed so far in 2026. Per the public health giant’s count, “Among these, 727 measles cases were reported by 20 jurisdictions: Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin. A total of six measles cases were reported among international visitors to the United States.”
Outbreaks continue
Utah is among the states with a serious uptick in cases, according to surveillance by the Utah Department of Health and Human Services. As of Feb. 3, the state’s measles dashboard shows 251 cases in 2025-26, 48 of them diagnosed in the last three weeks.
As the Associated Press reported, "An outbreak in South Carolina in the hundreds has surpassed the recorded case count in Texas’ 2025 outbreak, and there is also one on the Utah-Arizona border. Multiple other states have had confirmed cases this year. The outbreaks have mostly impacted children and have come as infectious disease experts warn that rising public distrust of vaccines generally may be contributing to the spread of a disease once declared eradicated by public health officials."
The CDC said that last year brought 49 outbreaks, which accounted for 89% of the confirmed cases. In 2024, there were 16 outbreaks and a total of 285 confirmed cases.
According to the CDC, there are other probable measles cases, but the agency only counts confirmed cases.
Among the confirmed cases nationwide, 28% were in children younger than 5, while 57% were in children ages 5 to 19. Adults accounted for 13% of cases and in 3% of cases, the age is not known.
The CDC statistics indicate that 95% of 2026 cases were in people who are not vaccinated or whose status is not known. In 2% of cases, the person had received one dose of the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine, while in 4% of cases, both doses had been given.
As with national cases, most of the confirmed measles cases in Utah involved people who were not vaccinated.
Last year, there were three deaths from measles nationally.
The measles vaccine
Per USA Today, children usually get the MMR vaccine in two doses as part of routine vaccination. The first is given at 12 to 15 months and the second at 4 to 6 years.
But the CDC reports that the vaccination rate has been dropping in the past few years, from the 95% deemed to provide herd immunity that also protects those who for various reasons cannot get the vaccine to closer to 92%.
Part of the issue could be mixed messages. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is well-known as a vaccine skeptic. As Deseret News reported, he initially downplayed the value of the MMR vaccine and suggested alternatives like vitamin A to deal with measles. As the outbreaks grew, Kennedy began to recommend people get the vaccine.
He recently posted on X that “the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine.”
The MMR vaccine is not like flu or COVID-19 vaccines which are given annually. Once a full dose of the MMR vaccine has been given, it confers lifetime protection, according to Dr. Paul Offit from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.