The United States eliminated endemic measles in 2000, but national case totals have climbed sharply since early 2025 as outbreaks have spread across multiple states. That trend has now reached a new threshold: over roughly the past 18 months, the country has logged more measles cases than in the previous 25 years combined, according to CDC data and state reports compiled by Johns Hopkins and reported by the Associated Press. The new totals place 2026 on track to exceed even 2025, which had already become the nation’s worst measles year in decades.
US measles totals have reached a new modern-era high
The scale of the increase is now measurable in national surveillance data. CDC said 2025 ended with 2,255 measles cases, including three deaths, the highest annual U.S. total since 1992. By late July 2026, the Johns Hopkins measles tracker cited by the Associated Press put this year’s count at about 2,295 cases, already above all of 2025 with months still left in the year.
Taken together, those two years account for well over 4,500 cases. CDC’s historical surveillance summaries show the United States reported about 4,056 measles cases in the entire 2001 through 2022 period. With 285 cases reported in 2024, that means the past 18 months have exceeded the combined total from the previous quarter-century.
The recent rise has been driven largely by outbreak-related transmission rather than isolated imported infections. CDC said 93% of confirmed 2026 cases counted through early May were linked to outbreaks, and its 2025 update found that 82% of cases reported through April 17, 2025, were connected to a multistate outbreak centered in Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma.
The current measles surge is national, but its local effects vary widely from state to state. CDC has said states have the most up-to-date information on cases and outbreaks in their jurisdictions, and the federal agency’s national tables can lag behind state reporting. That means local totals can change quickly as health departments confirm additional infections and tie them to existing outbreak chains.
Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma were at the center of the major 2025 outbreak described in CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. In 2026, newer large outbreaks have been reported in states including South Carolina, Utah and Arizona, according to the Associated Press, with smaller clusters identified elsewhere. Florida has also crossed 100 cases this year, with the state health department recording 155 cases through July 18, Axios reported.
What remains unclear in many places is the full geographic footprint of active transmission. Health departments do not always release a comprehensive list of every exposure site at the same time national counts are updated, and some cases are still being sorted between travel-related introductions and sustained community spread. That has made the picture uneven from one state and county to the next even as the national trend is unmistakable.
Federal health officials have consistently tied the resurgence to falling vaccination coverage and the ease with which measles spreads once it reaches undervaccinated communities. CDC said national MMR coverage among kindergartners fell to 92.5% in the 2024-25 school year, down from 95.2% in 2019-20. Public health officials generally treat 95% as an important threshold for limiting measles spread in communities.
CDC has also said global measles activity has increased, raising the risk that infected travelers will bring the virus into the United States. In its 2025 measles update, the agency said the post-pandemic resurgence abroad increased the risk for imported cases, especially when U.S. travelers are exposed overseas and return while infectious. Once that happens, communities with lower vaccination coverage are more vulnerable to sustained outbreaks.
For residents, the practical implication is that measles is no longer appearing only as occasional imported cases. CDC says most recent U.S. cases have been in children and adolescents who were unvaccinated or had unknown vaccination status, and measles can cause pneumonia, encephalitis and death. With national totals still rising in July 2026, public health agencies continue to treat the outbreaks as an ongoing response rather than a closed chapter.