U.S. measles cases are nearly triple what they were last year, including 12 cases in California, according to data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and California Department of Public Health.
The comeback of the disease once believed to be eradicated in the U.S., has alarmed health officials. Measles cases increased by 79 percent in 2023, the World Health Organization reported. The year before, the disease killed an estimated 130,000 people, mostly children, according to the World Health Organization.
Measles is a huge concern and directly related to declining measles vaccination rates. Vaccine hesitancy, fueled during the pandemic by the anti-vaccine movement, has affected vaccination rates nationwide. In addition, because children were quarantined during the pandemic, many missed out on well-child visits and didn’t catch up on their vaccines. That has meant 61 million fewer doses distributed nationwide between 2020 and 2022.
With five months left to go in the year, 26 states and the District of Columbia have reported 188 cases of measles, about half of which (49 percent, or 93) were severe enough to require hospitalization, mostly among people under the age of 5.
Last year, the nation saw 58 measles cases in four outbreaks. This year, there have been 13 outbreaks, the largest of them traced to a migrant shelter in Chicago in March in which 60 illnesses have been linked.
In California, hundreds of people at the UC Davis Medical Center were exposed to measles after a child who was infected with the virus was seen at the hospital in March, according to Sacramento County Public Health. People who were unvaccinated for measles at the hospital were at risk of developing the virus for up to 21 days following exposure.
Another case of possible exposure was reported in Alameda County at a restaurant on March 9. In February, an infected international traveler landed at Los Angeles International Airport and headed straight to a Los Angeles area fast food restaurant, prompting health officials to track a trail of potential exposures.
Prior to 2024, outbreaks occurred in the winter and spring of 2014-15, where at least 131 California residents were infected in a large measles outbreak associated with Disneyland, and in 2019 when 73 confirmed measles cases were confirmed in the state, largely linked to healthcare settings, according to the California Department of Public Health.
Seven states — Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon and Vermont — joined the growing list of states with measles outbreaks in the past month, according to the CDC. In Massachusetts, the case was the first in three years.
The CDC said the current uptick in cases is due to an increase in vaccine hesitancy since the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as a global uptick in measles cases.
About 85 percent of U.S. measles cases this year were among people who haven’t been vaccinated or had an unknown vaccination status, and 10 percent were among people who had taken only one dose of MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine.
In some U.S. communities, the number of people protected against measles by the vaccine has fallen below the 95 percent coverage level needed to prevent measles outbreaks.
Measles was declared eradicated from the United States in 2000, a status threatened by a large measles outbreak in 2019, which resulted in 1,200 cases, mostly associated with outbreaks in Orthodox Jewish communities in New York. The 2024 measles outbreak is the highest since then.
Before the vaccine became available in 1963, between 3 million and 4 million people were infected every year.
Measles is highly contagious. A sick person can spread it to 90 percent of the people in close contact if they are not immune, and the virus can remain in the air for up to two hours after an infected person leaves.
Common symptoms include a high fever, cough, pink eye (conjunctivitis), runny nose, white spots in the mouth, and a rash that typically starts on the face and spreads downward to the feet.
Between 1 and 3 of every 1,000 children infected with measles die from complications of measles, which can include pneumonia and swelling of the brain.
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