Almost all of the cases are in unvaccinated individuals or in individuals whose vaccination status is unknown, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS).
Measles vaccination rates for young children may be far lower than publicly reported, a troubling development that could mean the United States is closer than expected to losing its “elimination status” for the extremely contagious disease.
“We are experiencing an extremely concerning decline in measles vaccination in the very group most vulnerable to the disease,” said Benjamin Rader, a computational epidemiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and the author of a recent study that looked at children’s vaccination rates.
Tennessee has confirmed its first case of measles for this year amid the outbreak of the virus that has hit a number of states across the country. ...
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that 95 percent of the confirmed cases in 2025 involved individuals who were either unvaccinated or had an unknown vaccination status.
Although measles was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000, it still rages on in many parts of the world. With decreasing vaccination rates across the US, experts say, imported cases can have large consequences.
