The United States has logged 5,182 confirmed measles cases so far in 2026, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday. That is the highest yearly count the agency has recorded since 1991 and more than double the 2,289 cases reported in all of 2025.
Cases have turned up in 45 states and Washington, D.C., and the national total climbed by 330 from the previous weekly update. Ninety-six percent of this year's patients were unvaccinated or had no known vaccination record, CDC data show.
The surge comes as an expert commission of the Pan American Health Organization prepares to rule later this month on whether the U.S. should lose the measles-elimination designation it first secured in 2000.
Pennsylvania has been hit harder than any other state. Its health department counts 1,487 cases and 287 hospitalizations, and it recorded its sixth measles-associated death this week. South Carolina, with 670 cases, and Utah, with 536, follow in the CDC tally.
Deaths have reached other states as well. Wisconsin health officials reported an infant's death Thursday, the state's first from measles since 1990, and New York recorded its first known measles-associated death in more than three decades earlier in the week.
A fight over the death count
Federal figures tell a different story. The CDC has confirmed only four measles deaths this year, a number it says is subject to change, compared with three in 2025. Officials have estimated that eight deaths were probably linked to the disease, including in Pennsylvania, New York and Wisconsin.
The gap opened after the CDC, under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., stopped relying on state health department numbers and began tracking measles deaths through mortality data from the National Center for Health Statistics.
Pennsylvania attributes a death to measles when a patient with a confirmed infection dies inside a 30-day window after symptoms begin, unless an unrelated event caused it. The CDC first added two deaths of unvaccinated Pennsylvanians, announced by the state in August, to its national count, then dropped them after Kennedy questioned whether measles caused or contributed to them.
Kennedy suggested that Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, had reached a premature conclusion and accused him of exploiting the deaths to push residents toward vaccination, a charge he leveled in a post on X.
The performance was a replay of the Democrats’ COVID playbook: fearmongering, misinformation, finger-pointing, and the weaponization of infectious disease fears for political gain
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., U.S. Health and Human Services secretary
Epidemiologists say counting measles-associated deaths has long been standard practice for both the World Health Organization and the CDC. The agency says it is now working with the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists on a uniform definition.
Who is getting sick
Nationally, 562 people have been hospitalized, about 11% of all cases. Adults 20 and older make up 2,132 cases, young people ages 5 to 19 account for 2,104, and children under 5 for 908; together, children and teenagers represent roughly 59% of infections.
Most infections, 4,993, are tied to outbreaks, and 43 new outbreaks have been reported this year. Vaccination coverage among kindergarteners slipped from 95.2% in the 2019-2020 school year to 92.4% in 2025-2026.
The Trump administration says the CDC has sent about $100 million nationwide to bolster prevention and response to measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases. New York, where Gov. Kathy Hochul declared an emergency over the virus, received $2.36 million, with another $2.07 million going to New York City.
