There Have Already Been More 2026 Measles Cases in the U.S. Than 2023 and 2024 Combined

If you paid the slightest bit of attention to news about infectious disease last year, then surely you read about the resurgence of measles in the U.S., which reached a total number of U.S. cases–2,255 sickened and three fatalities, including multiple children–that hadn’t been seen in roughly 34 years, since the last big measles outbreak of 1989-1991. Since the initial outbreak in West Texas in early 2025 that began our current cycle, potentially leading to the U.S. being stripped of the measles elimination status it has had for 25 years, not a single week has gone by where we didn’t register additional cases. But guess what? This measles surge isn’t a 2025 topic; it’s an even bigger 2026 topic. Because the last few weeks saw far more reported measles cases in the U.S. than ANY weeklong period in 2025, indicating that this problem is only getting worse. Potentially much worse. In fact, there have already been more measles cases in the United States in the first three weeks of 2026 than there were in the entirety of 2023 and 2024 … combined.

Updated as of Jan. 22, the latest U.S. measles data from the Centers for Disease Control notes 416 confirmed cases so far this year in the U.S., spread across 14 states to date. The vast majority, however, are in the rapidly re-intensifying outbreak in South Carolina, which has been coming in waves since November. This outbreak has now reached 649 confirmed infections since last year, and threatens to quickly overtake Texas as the single worst in the United States in decades. And lest we forget who is being affected here, the people catching the incredibly infectious disease are almost entirely school-aged children, because they’re the cohort most likely to be lacking the protection of the MMR vaccine, which is given in two doses early in life. The cruel irony is that the vaccinated, but now vaccine-skeptic parents of these kids are protected, but their children are not, thanks to Mom or Dad listening to the likes of Joe Rogan or Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over the overwhelming medical consensus. According to the CDC’s data, a full 86% of the measles cases in 2026 so far are in children under 19 years of age, of whom 97% of the infected were not fully vaccinated with the MMR vaccine. A mere 3% of those infected had received both doses of the MMR vaccine.

RFK Jr. appointee Kirk Milhoan has just clearly stated, out loud, that he wants to experiment on the people of the United States by seeing what happens as vaccination coverage plummets and infectious diseases spread.

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— Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD (@elizabethjacobs.bsky.social) Jan 22, 2026 at 2:47 PM

So, with the first three weeks of 2026 proving to be more virulent than any point in 2025, I’m sure the federal government’s response is going to be robust, right? They’re going to note the grave danger to public health and double down on promoting mass MMR vaccination, to bring our national vaccination rate up to the levels (95% or more) needed for herd immunity, right? Right?!?

Well, no, not so much. Would you believe it that RFK Jr.’s handpicked Principal Deputy Director of the CDC, Dr. Ralph Abraham, who previously ended the promotion of vaccines in his state of Louisiana, doesn’t think that current outbreak, at levels not seen for the last 34 years, is a particularly big deal? At a Tuesday briefing on the ongoing measles cases, Abraham also downplayed the seriousness of the U.S. losing its measles elimination status after a quarter century, saying that it would “not really” be a significant loss, because losing the status “does not mean that the measles would be widespread, nor would it alter any key measles elimination strategies.” Abraham would go on to simultaneously recommend vaccination and also “personal freedom” to not vaccinate children, echoing the weird doublespeak endemic to proximity to the Trump administration. He even found time to work in the southern border into a conversation about epidemiology, saying that measles cases are “just the cost of doing businesses with our borders. We have these communities that choose to be unvaccinated. That’s their personal freedom.”

That “personal freedom” cost several Texas children–American citizens–their lives in early 2025, and it’s likely to cost more lives in 2026, especially given that the current pace of infections would put us far, far above the 34-year-high total of last year. It is beyond clear that the appointment of ideological zealots and Trump administration doormats at organizations like the CDC will ultimately hurt the U.S. response to threats such as measles, through their failure to take those threats seriously and failure to use every resource at their disposal to promote the one effective countermeasure: mass vaccination. Instead, the likes of Dr. Ralph Abraham find themselves talking about “alternatives” for treatment, choosing to ineffectually battle symptoms rather than try to prevent the disease in the first place.

What should also be clear is that despite our federal government being held hostage by anti-science luddites and grifters, organizations like the CDC are still staffed by plenty of people who actually do believe in pursuing proven science and the best possible health outcomes for Americans. Speaking to Jezebel, a CDC official who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal stressed the crucial importance of vaccination in vulnerable communities like South Carolina, and called for “real public health leadership” while pushing back against several of Abraham’s recent public statements.

“South Carolina shows how challenging it is to control measles without adequate vaccination,” said the CDC employee to Jezebel/Splinter. “It is the most infectious disease we know. And it was a monumental task to achieve elimination. To lose that status is a flashing red light on the state of our public health and a bad omen of things to come. We need real public health leadership that is willing to do the hard work to prevent more serious illness and deaths.”

Our source added one more thing: “And we just detected measles in wastewater in Gaines County, Texas, which is where this started a year ago.”

That capper perfectly illustrates exactly why this problem is likely to only get worse, rather than better, even with more attention and resources for treatment devoted to it: If there are still unvaccinated people clustered together, and if the virus is still around, it will quickly find them. Just because the outbreak in West Texas “ended” last year, that doesn’t make the unvaccinated people there any safer. Another wave of infection can do the same thing all over again, and it will just continue happening until vaccination rates rise. It’s exactly what happened during the last big measles wave in 1989-1991: People felt safe, vaccination rates fell, and the disease returned, killing more than 100 Americans, most of them children. For the past 25 years, meanwhile, we’ve lived with the disease officially eliminated in the United States. Once again, people felt safe. They felt like this could no longer hurt them. And once again, they were wrong.

Thanks to the way anti-vaccine beliefs were absorbed into our polarized culture war and made into a piece of MAGA American identities, a record high number of U.S. children entering kindergarten had exemptions for required vaccinations last year. It is these children who will ultimately be the most at risk from a disease that functionally didn’t exist in this country as recently as a few years ago.

Just how out of control will measles cases in the U.S. get in 2026, and is there a level where the likes of Dr. Ralph Abraham or RFK Jr. would stop saying it was “not really” a problem? We’ll see just how many deaths are considered acceptable.

Trump is the first pro-measles administration this country has ever had.

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— Dean Baker (@deanbaker13.bsky.social) Jan 20, 2026 at 9:17 PM