The U.S. declared measles eliminated in 2000—but it could soon lose that status, depending on the conclusions of a meeting of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) next month.

Measles cases in the United States are rising; there could be twice as many cases in 2026 as in 2025. The measles tracker run by John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health counted 4,267 cases as of October 15. The total for last year was 2,286. 

Pennsylvania has accounted for more than a quarter of the 2026 cases, with 1,136. South Carolina and Utah had the next-highest statewide counts, at 671 and 527, respectively; but almost every state has seen at least one case this year. 

In the decades after the first measles vaccine became available in 1963, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) set a goal to eliminate the disease.

The CDC defined the elimination of a disease as a reduction to zero within a “defined geographical area as a result of deliberate efforts.” That finally happened almost 40 years later, in 2000, when a period with no continuous spread of measles lasted for more than a year.

Now, measles has been spreading within the U.S. for almost two years.

“That the U.S. will likely lose elimination status is one of many indicators of our eroding public health system,” Amria Roess, a professor of global health and epidemiology at George Mason University and former CDC officer, said in a measles tip sheet the university published this week.

“We now have so many unvaccinated individuals that we are seeing widespread local transmission of measles,” she said.

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