US posts highest annual measles case tally in 33 years amid Texas outbreak

The annual tally of measles cases in the US is the highest in 33 years, as an ongoing outbreak in west Texas continues to drive cases.

The latest figures mean Americans will have to look back to 1992 to find a worse year with the vaccine preventable disease. The official tally very likely undercounts the scope of the outbreak, experts told the Guardian.

“When you talk to people on the ground, you get the sense that this outbreak has been severely underestimated,” said Dr Paul Offit, director of the vaccine education center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Confirmed cases appear to be the “tip of a much bigger iceberg”, he said.

Measles was declared eliminated in the US in 2000. However, as the pandemic disrupted routine childhood visits to the doctors and anti-vaccine organizations saw their coffers swell during the pandemic, measles vaccination rates have fallen below a critical threshold to prevent outbreaks in some communities.

“The number of new cases has slowed down, but I don’t think there’s any reason to suggest this will be our last,” said Dr Peter Hotez, a vaccine expert and dean for the national school of tropical medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.

He later added: “It’s a very dark epidemic that never had to happen.”

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Source: The Guardian, 7 July 2025