Measles is continuing to spread across the country, despite signs pointing to slowing transmission in some of the hardest-hit states -- but experts warn the start of the school year could bring cases roaring back soon.
The new cases come after Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. got into a shouting match on CNN when pressed on vaccines.
Federal health officials just reported more than 50 new measles cases as of the last day of July and 2,371 nationwide, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Active outbreaks of the highly infectious, brain-swelling disease are continuing in Ohio, Utah, Virginia and Pennsylvania, which has seen more cases reported in a week than at any time in the past decade in the state, according to The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Doctors say they’re concerned about what effect kids starting school could have on the state’s outbreak.
“A virus that's as infectious and easily transmittable as measles is going to take off,” Andrew Lutzkanin, a doctor at Penn State Health, told the paper.
Utah experts say they are similarly troubled.
"It's still here, it's still transmitting," Utah state epidemiologist Leisha Nolenhe told The Associated Press in June. "We just need those few cases to hit the wrong community and it could flare up really big again."
‘Unacceptable’
Children and teenagers have made up the majority of national cases, with 93 percent of the infected unvaccinated, per the CDC.
The measles vaccine, which also targets mumps and rubella infections, is safe and two doses offer lifelong protection.
Without it, cases can result in a bumpy red rash, high fevers, ear infections and diarrhea. In extreme cases, measles cases can lead to pneumonia, blindness, death and a rare but fatal degenerative brain disease years after infection.
The virus can live for up to two hours in the air where an infected person coughed or sneezed, too.
Despite this, vaccine coverage needed to limit the spread of measles among kindergarteners is lower than it should be and has been declining since before the Covid-19 pandemic.
That’s largely due to vaccine hesitancy and misinformation, infectious disease doctors say.
Pennsylvania health leaders say the state’s vaccination rate is high enough to prevent spread during the school year, but others have worried statewide averages might not account for vulnerable pockets in the state where cases could balloon, according to the Post-Gazette.
One in every four kindergarten classes are at risk, with vaccination rates among the students below the threshold of safety, according to the publication’s April investigation.
“That even one child could die from measles when it could have been prevented by people getting the vaccine, I think is unacceptable,” Lutzkanin said.
RFK on CNN
Fear about a heightened situation in Pennsylvania comes as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. seeks to assure the U.S. officials are on top of outbreaks.
The Trump administration has given more than $8.5 million to states and local partners for the response, Health and Human Services Department Press Secretary Emily Hilliard previously told The Independent.
Denying any responsibility for the surge in cases, Kennedy told CNN in a contentious Sunday interview that the U.S. is doing better at handling measles than any other country in the world
He pinned the current spread on Covid-19 lockdowns that left children without vaccinations and said religion played a big role - as it did in the last big U.S. outbreak in 1989.
“The communities that are suffering from measles are almost all religious communities that just don’t vaccinate. The Mennonites have not vaccinated since 1796, since Edward Jenner invented the smallpox vaccine,” Kennedy said, telling host Dana Bash that “it’s hard to blame that on me, as much as you want to blame that on me.”
“No, I don’t want to blame you. I’m asking you because you have a very powerful voice on these issues for people who are skeptical,” Bash retorted. “Let me finish!”
“I’ve never questioned the efficacy of the MMR vaccine,” Kennedy said, also telling CNN’s viewers that the vaccine “stops measles in about 97 percent of the cases” and that “parents should get their children vaccinated for measles.”
However, in March of last year, Kennedy told Fox News that waning immunity was tied to the spread in southern states, according to NYU Langone epidemiologist Dr. Céline Gounder.
Cases are at their highest levels in decades and already exceeding last year’s total of 2,289.
The U.S. will see if it loses its long-held elimination status, indicating that the virus has not circulated for a 12-month period, in November.
“The assessment for elimination isn’t until November, but that is a scheduling issue, basically,” Anne Schuchat, who led the CDC’s immunization and respiratory disease group from 2006 to 2015, told KFF Health News.
