“It is a fully preventable disease. It is unconscionable that we have this amount of measles,” said Noel Brewer, a public health professor at the University of North Carolina.
The Pan American Health Organization revoked the United States measles-elimination status on Friday, ending a 26-year run. The international health body determined the country failed to halt continuous transmission of the virus for more than a year, as reported by Yahoo News Malaysia.
The decision from the World Health Organization’s Americas branch arrives as the U.S. faces its highest number of measles cases in more than three decades. Some 7,500 people in the U.S. have been infected and 13 have died since 2025. This resurgence coincides with falling immunization rates and rising vaccine hesitancy under U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
To reach its decision, PAHO reviewed epidemiological and laboratory evidence submitted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The review assessed whether the same strain of measles had circulated uninterrupted for 12 months or longer, indicating local transmission rather than imported cases.
As of Thursday, 5,182 confirmed cases had been reported to the CDC in 2026 across 45 states, New York City, and the District of Columbia.
That figure surpasses last year’s total of 2,289. Canada, Spain, and the U.K. also recently lost their elimination status after WHO expert reviews.
Brewer, who chairs an independent advisory panel on measles, presented the CDC status report and his group’s assessment to PAHO on Tuesday. While that report remains confidential, a source familiar with the findings confirmed the agency determined the U.S. experienced 12 continuous months of viral transmission.
The U.S. originally achieved its measles-elimination status in 2000. Halting transmission requires a 95% vaccination rate to establish herd immunity. Two doses of the measles vaccine provide 97% protection against a virus that can cause blindness, deafness, brain damage, or death.
William Moss, an epidemiology professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told Yahoo News Malaysia that the loss damages the country’s reputation as a public health powerhouse.
“For the average American, it means that the United States will continue to have large outbreaks, putting people at risk of disease, hospitalization and death,” Moss told Yahoo News Malaysia.
Dr. Erica Schwartz, director of the CDC, stated in an interview prior to the decision that the agency would continue working with states to encourage immunization regardless of the ruling. Restoring elimination status requires a country to end transmission and remain free of an outbreak for at least 12 months.
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