US Measles Cases Have More Than Doubled the Total for All of 2025

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed 5,182 measles cases in the United States in 2026, a count the agency's surveillance page gives as of Nov. 5, 2026. For all of 2025, CDC recorded 2,289 confirmed cases.

Nearly all of those cases are tied to outbreaks. CDC counts 4,993 of them as outbreak-associated, meaning each belongs to a cluster of three or more related cases. The agency says the page is there to give the public timely information about confirmed measles in the country, and that state, local, tribal and territorial health departments run the investigations and notify CDC of the cases they confirm.

CDC states the limits of the count on its own measles case and outbreak page. It includes only confirmed cases that jurisdictions have notified to the agency and leaves out probable ones, and it assigns each case to a year by the week of the patient's rash onset rather than the date the case was reported. The agency also marks the current counts preliminary and subject to change.

Measles was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000, which CDC defines as no measles spreading within the country, with new cases turning up only when someone catches the virus abroad and comes home. Of the earlier years the agency itemizes on that page, the highest annual total was 1,274 confirmed cases in 2019.

CDC gives two reasons for more measles activity. Coverage of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine among kindergartners was 92.4% in the 2025–2026 school year, below the 95% the agency says a community needs for most people to be protected by the immunity of those around them. Measles activity is also rising worldwide, which CDC says means more chances that an unvaccinated person infected abroad returns to the United States.