Measles Deaths, Record Cases, and Three Growing Outbreaks Alarm Health Officials

A Crisis That Was Supposed to Be History

The outbreaks come during the nation's worst measles year in more than three decades. There have been 36 new outbreaks reported in 2026, and 94% of confirmed cases — 2,614 of 2,777 — are outbreak-associated. What makes the current moment especially alarming is not just the scale, but the human cost: two measles-related deaths in Pennsylvania's Lancaster County — the first in the state in 35 years and the first confirmed anywhere in the United States this year.

Ongoing outbreaks have put the U.S. at risk of losing its official measles elimination status, which it has held since 2000. That status — earned after decades of widespread vaccination — is now hanging by a thread as clusters of cases grow in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Georgia simultaneously.

State by State: What's Happening on the Ground

Pennsylvania has reported the largest outbreak among the three states that have identified growing cases in recent weeks. The state has confirmed 393 cases across 28 counties this year, with 86 reported in the most recent week, and roughly half are in Lancaster County, where 70 people have been hospitalized. Of the 393 people in Pennsylvania who have fallen ill with measles in 2026, none have been fully vaccinated — meaning none received two doses of the MMR vaccine.

Wisconsin's outbreak includes 52 cases in Iowa County, 43 in Lafayette County, and three in Grant County. Including two unrelated infections reported earlier in the year, Wisconsin has recorded 100 measles cases in 2026 — the state's highest annual total since 1990. The CDC has deployed two public health workers to assist local investigators with contact tracing and case identification, and state officials say nearly every person infected during the outbreak had not received the MMR vaccine.

Georgia's Department of Public Health confirmed four additional cases of measles, all close contacts of a previously confirmed case, in an outbreak associated with a daycare setting in the metro Atlanta area. The children were either unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated. Georgia has now reported 11 measles cases this year, making 2026 the state's second-highest annual total in the past decade.

Why This Is Happening

Health experts point to lower vaccination rates as the main reason for increases in preventable infectious diseases like measles. The vast majority of cases have been in people who were unvaccinated, and outbreaks have spread in communities with lower vaccination rates. The numbers behind that trend are stark: vaccination coverage among U.S. kindergartners has decreased from 95.2% during the 2019–2020 school year to 92.4% in the 2025–2026 school year, leaving approximately 280,000 kindergartners at risk.

In Wisconsin specifically, the CDC found that during the 2024–2025 school year, only about 85% of kindergartners in the state were vaccinated against measles — ranking lower than the national average. Similarly, the number of kids getting the MMR vaccine in Pennsylvania's Lancaster County has been falling steadily, from 95.5% in 2017 to 87.6% in 2025. That kind of local drop is precisely what allows measles — one of the most contagious diseases known — to gain a foothold.

What You Can Do Right Now

Measles is very contagious and spreads through the air when an infected person coughs or sneezes. The measles virus can stay in the air or on surfaces for up to two hours after an infected person has left the room. In some cases, it can cause severe infections in the lungs and brain that can lead to cognitive issues, deafness, or death.

Protection from measles is included in the MMR vaccine, which is typically given to children in two doses — one at 12 to 15 months and another at 4 to 6 years old, according to the CDC. When more than 95% of people in a community are vaccinated, most people are protected through community immunity. With outbreaks now active in dozens of states and the national case count at its highest point in 35 years, public health officials are urging anyone unsure of their vaccination status to check their records and get vaccinated without delay. The math is simple: the more communities fall below that 95% threshold, the more room the virus has to run.