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Ever since a measles outbreak got rolling in Texas and New Mexico back in February, the number of people getting infected has continued to grow. Now, as of September 30, there have been a total of 1,544 confirmed cases of measles in the United States – the most since 1992 – and those are just the cases that have been reported.
What began in Gaines County, Texas, where nearly 1 in 5 incoming kindergartners in the 2023-24 school year did not get the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, has now spread to 42 states.
Measles had been declared eliminated in the United States in the year 2000 with only 85 people in the entire country reporting an infection that year due to widespread vaccination.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports, “When more than 95% of people in a community are vaccinated (coverage >95%), most people are protected through community immunity (herd immunity). However, vaccination coverage among U.S. kindergartners has decreased from 95.2% during the 2019–2020 school year to 92.7% in the 2023–2024 school year, leaving approximately 280,000 kindergartners at risk during the 2023–2024 school year.”
Of the 1,544 confirmed cases of measles in the United States, 27% have been seen in children under the age of 5-years-old, 39% of the cases are those aged 5 to 19 years-old, while 33% are people over the age of 20. 92% of all cases involve people who were either unvaccinated or didn’t know if they had been vaccinated.
Meanwhile, in Canada…
Things are even worse in Canada. As of September 29, more than 5,000 cases of measles (4,646 confirmed, 360 probable) have been reported in 2025. It is the higher number of measles cases in the country since 1991.
2,379 of those cases have been reported in the province of Ontario, 1,902 have been reported in the province of Alberta, 284 in British Columbia,, 228 in Manitoba, and 36 in Quebec. New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and the Northwest Territories comprise the rest of the measles cases. Labrador, Newfoundland, Nunavut, and the Yukon are the only provinces to have not reported any cases of measles.
The Canadian measles outbreak began in New Brunswick in October 2024. 93% of those who have reported being infected either have been unvaccinated or did not know if they had been. Measles had essentially been eliminated in Canada in 1998 with only 17 cases reported in the entire country that year.