US Measles Cases Break Record Since Returning to Country

There are now more cases of measles in America than in any year since the disease was eradicated nearly 20 years ago.

Written byCatherine Offord

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The number of measles cases in 2019 has hit record highs in the US and the rest of the world, as millions of children miss out on vaccination against the virus. In America, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has logged nearly 700 cases—the highest number since 1994—while the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates the global burden at more than 110,000 in the just the first three months of 2019, representing a 300 percent increase from the same period in 2018, according to Reuters.

“The measles virus will always find unvaccinated children,” Henrietta Fore, executive director of the United Nations children’s fund UNICEF, says in a statement. “The ground for the global measles outbreaks we are witnessing today was laid years ago.”

More than 22 US states have recorded outbreaks of the virus in 2019 so far. The 695 confirmed cases top ...

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Meet the Author

Catherine Offord
After undergraduate research with spiders at the University of Oxford and graduate research with ants at Princeton University, Catherine left arthropods and academia to become a science journalist. She has worked in various guises at The Scientist since 2016. As Senior Editor, she wrote articles for the online and print publications, and edited the magazine’s Notebook, Careers, and Bio Business sections. She reports on subjects ranging from cellular and molecular biology to research misconduct and science policy. Find more of her work at her website.
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