US set to lose measles elimination status after year of spread
A Pan American Health Organization review this month is expected to revoke the certification Washington has held since 2000, with Pennsylvania now the epicentre of the outbreak.
The Pan American Health Organization is expected to decide this month whether the United States keeps the measles elimination status it was certified as reaching in 2000, with the designation likely to be revoked after more than a year of continuous transmission inside the country, according to the Association of Health Care Journalists.
Reuters reported that experts were meeting for a review of the status. PAHO, the regional public health agency for the Americas, is the body that determines whether the United States has eliminated endemic transmission of measles, AHCJ said.
Elimination status does not mean measles has vanished. It certifies that a country has interrupted continuous spread of the virus, and AHCJ reported that transmission in the United States has now gone on for more than a year. The review turns on that record.
AHCJ described Pennsylvania as the current epicentre of measles in the United States and said Lisa McHugh, the state's epidemiologist, is serving as incident manager for the response there. Ideastream reported that an outbreak in Ohio was continuing as the review approached. Neither report gave a case count.
Noel Brewer, a public health professor at the University of North Carolina, chairs the national committee that certifies the CDC's report on measles elimination and deals with PAHO on it, according to AHCJ. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and the centre's co-director Charlotte Moser also spoke at a briefing AHCJ convened on the review.
NBC News reported that the loss of status would be the work of another communicable disease: misinformation. CIDRAP published an explainer on what the change would mean for the country.
AHCJ said Moser had been the consumer representative on the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices when the entire committee was dismissed in June 2025.
The briefing included a first look at an excerpt from an upcoming Children's Hospital of Philadelphia documentary, "Community Immunity: Caring About Our Neighbors."
How the reports differ
AHCJ's account came as a notice for a briefing it convened, and it alone named Pennsylvania as the current epicentre and gave the state epidemiologist's role in the response. Ideastream led instead with a continuing outbreak in Ohio. Reuters framed the story around the expert review of the status, while NBC News led with the cause, reporting that the loss stems from another communicable disease, misinformation. CIDRAP carried an explainer on the consequences rather than new developments, and only AHCJ noted that the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices was dismissed in June 2025.
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