The Pan American Health Organization has determined that the United States has lost its measles elimination status, meaning domestic spread of the virus is now considered significant and sustained, Live Science reported. The United States officially eliminated measles in 2000, after more than a year without continuous domestic transmission. Travelers still sometimes brought the virus in and sparked local outbreaks, but those did not lead to ongoing spread inside the country. That status has now been revoked, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, after PAHO, the World Health Organization's regional office for the Americas, reevaluated the evidence. The United States joins other countries that have seen measles return, including the United Kingdom and Canada.
The decision follows a series of major outbreaks that began in January 2025. Nearly 2,300 cases were reported nationwide in 2025, Live Science reported, and spread has continued into this year. Elimination status is a technical public-health designation, not a claim that measles had vanished from the planet or that no imported cases occurred after 2000. It meant the country had interrupted continuous transmission. Losing it means health authorities now judge that the virus is again circulating in a sustained way inside the United States, a reversal of a milestone that had stood for more than 25 years.
Measles is highly contagious and can be prevented by vaccination. The new designation does not, by itself, change treatment for individual patients, but it is a formal acknowledgment that recent outbreaks were large and persistent enough to undo a long-standing achievement. Live Science's account, based on PAHO's review as reported by the Journal, is a status change at the regional health-agency level, not a new vaccine recommendation and not a county-by-county map of current transmission.
The verified news is the revocation of elimination status and the outbreak figures given in the report. It should not be read as a statement that every U.S. community now has measles, or as a substitute for official case counts from federal or state health departments as those are updated. So far in 2026, almost 5,412 confirmed cases have been recorded, the report said, though both years' tallies are likely undercounts. Maimuna Majumder of Boston Children's Hospital previously told Live Science that when January 2025 picked up, she "felt like this might be the point of no return," while stressing that elimination "has always been a tenuous prospect." Because measles spreads so easily, at least 95% of the population needs immunity to prevent large outbreaks; just 10 states reported kindergarten vaccination rates above that threshold for 2025-2026. The nation's first measles-related deaths this year were reported in Pennsylvania in August, and state counts have since reached eight, including deaths reported in Wisconsin and New York. To regain elimination status, the United States must go 12 months without continuous spread. PAHO's review meeting was originally scheduled for April and was pushed to November.