Measles cases in the U.S. reached 2,030 on Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. That’s just a few hundred shy of the 2,288 logged in all of 2025, a record-breaking year that saw more measles diagnoses than any year since 1991.
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There have been 30 new outbreaks this year, compared to 48 last year, the CDC said. The majority of cases are children and teenagers. More than 92% are unvaccinated and 6% (127 of the 2,030 patients) have been hospitalized.
In Florida, the state health department has confirmed 154 cases since Jan. 1. Most have been in Collier County, where an outbreak occurred at Ave Maria University, near Naples. There haven’t been any new cases reported in Florida for more than a week, according to the state’s tracker. Florida’s health department has not held any formal press briefings and has remained largely silent on the outbreak.
The Utah Department of Health and Human Services reported just nine new cases total over the past three weeks. The state had previously been logging approximately 10 each week. It’s still considered a major outbreak, however, with 675 cases in the state since last summer.
A massive outbreak in South Carolina — the worst in the U.S. in more than three decades — wound down at the end of April. Shortly after, the virus began spreading in rural areas of Pennsylvania and Virginia.
As of Wednesday, Pennsylvania‘s health department had confirmed 50 cases, mostly in Lancaster and Lebanon counties.
The largest cluster is in Virginia, with 91 cases mostly in the central part of the state.
After the virus emerged there in late April, Virginia’s Piedmont Health District partnered with Lynchburg-based Centra Health to offer a dispatch number to call paramedics for home visits.
With this, instead of showing up at doctors’ offices or the emergency department with a potential measles case, the healthcare workers can test an entire family at once, if needed, and treat symptoms like high fevers and dehydration.
It’s possible that early interventions can help keep patients out of the hospital, said Dr. Chris Thomson, executive vice president for Centra Health.
“By being able to get to someone who calls at an early stage of their illness, and perhaps being able to go to a home and provide IV fluids to someone who’s dehydrated keeps them from becoming ill enough” to warrant a hospitalization, Thomson said. “Also by being in the home, we’re able to identify whether or not there are others who are ill, providing more surveillance than we would if we did not have this service.”
While vaccines are offered, they’re not a focus of the initiative, said Piedmont Health District Director Dr. Maria Almond. The largely unvaccinated community has been much more receptive to advice on isolation and quarantine.
“There’s a strong desire in public health to run right towards an outbreak shouting, ‘We have the answer! Get vaccinated!’” Almond said. “But when we start with what we believe is the answer for them, that door is just going to shut.”
Still, Almond said she would not be surprised if the outbreak continues for several more months.
It’s unclear whether the ongoing outbreaks will cause the U.S. to lose its status of having eliminated the virus from circulation in 2000. The Pan American Health Organization is expected to make a decision in November.
