Key facts
- A panel of eight independent experts will weigh the epidemiological evidence in Washington DC as part of PAHO, a WHO regional branch.
- The PAHO director will make the final call on whether the US keeps measles elimination status.
- Dr Paul Offit said measles is now endemic in the US regardless of what PAHO decides.
- Two-thirds of people infected with measles in Pennsylvania are adults, Offit said.
- Cleveland public health director Dr David Margolius urged people to find proof of measles vaccination or face a blood draw or 21-day quarantine.
- The CDC has lost up to one-third of its staff, the report said, and Kennedy has interfered in the agency's reporting of measles deaths.
The United States could lose its measles elimination status as early as the week of November 11, 2026, a formal public health designation whose loss would place the country alongside Canada and several European and Asian nations that had eliminated the disease only for it to return. A panel of eight independent experts will consider the epidemiological evidence in Washington DC as part of the Pan American Health Organization, a regional branch of the World Health Organization, and the PAHO director will make the final call.
The US is in the midst of its worst measles outbreak since 1991, with more than 5,400 cases nationally, according to the Johns Hopkins University International Vaccine Access Center tracker. Six people have died in Pennsylvania, a child died in New York on election day and an infant died in Wisconsin days later. Nearly every US state has an active outbreak.
Dr Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and a prominent critic of Kennedy, said the designation's loss would be "a tremendous step backwards." He said measles is now endemic in the US regardless of the PAHO decision because the country "critically decreased the percentage" of people vaccinated.
Measles kills one to three people per 1,000 infected and hospitalizes about one in five unvaccinated people who contract it, according to the report. Two doses of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine are 97% effective. Offit said two-thirds of people infected in Pennsylvania are adults, a group on which researchers have little information, and that mothers have given birth to babies with congenital measles.
Dr David Margolius, director of public health in Cleveland, Ohio, and a director-at-large of the Big Cities Health Coalition, urged people to find proof of measles vaccination in case they are exposed, warning that without it patients face an immunology blood draw or a 21-day quarantine. He said vaccine hesitancy was rising before Trump took office and that the case count is climbing everywhere, adding: "This could happen even under a more pro-public health administration."
The report said the CDC's response capacity has been hampered, with the agency losing up to one-third of its staff, and that Kennedy has interfered in its reporting of measles deaths and spread misinformation about measles vaccines. It also cited the US withdrawal from the WHO and from GAVI, which provides measles vaccines to nations such as India and Malawi, and said about 95,000 measles deaths occur globally each year, mostly in unvaccinated children under five, according to the WHO.