2,300 measles cases and climbing, how can we stop the spread?

**Christy Strawser** (0:01)
The day's biggest stories, the people behind the headlines, the conversations you won't hear anywhere else. I'm Christy Strawser, you're listening to Audacy's On Deadline. It's the summer of sketchy lettuce, but it's also the summer of measles as cases skyrocket across the US.
Let's get the latest from WWJ in Detroit.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:22)
It used to be that measles was really something that we would see, what we call sporadically, meaning that it didn't show up very often, and when it did show up, it went away quickly.
But that is not what we're seeing in 2026 So in 2026, thus far, as of about two or three days ago, we have had a total of 2,321 cases of measles that have been confirmed in the United States. And unusually, most of those cases are tied to domestic outbreaks, meaning someone got measles from somebody else in the United States. Whereas previously, we would see it, that most people who had measles in the United States had acquired their measles abroad. And this is very, very unusual.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:08)
And is there something that's helping drive this domestic spread versus catching it in, while traveling internationally?

**SPEAKER_2** (1:21)
Yeah. So this has really been driven by drops in vaccination. The number one way to prevent measles is to be vaccinated with the MMR vaccine, or as we sometimes use now the MMRV vaccine.
And what we are seeing is a drop in vaccine uptake, particularly on time vaccine uptake. And so when the, when population level vaccination rates fall, more people get measles and it increases the number of people to whom measles can spread.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:56)
And what, are there certain states that we are seeing more cases of measles in versus others?

**SPEAKER_2** (2:02)
The states that have been hardest hit are South Carolina and Utah. Although, you know, Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Virginia have also been quite heavily impacted by measles. Michigan falls, you know, somewhere just below those hardest hit states with between, you know, 10 and 50 measles cases. I can pull up the exact number of measles cases we've had.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:24)
Are these numbers something that is concerning infectious disease specialists?

**SPEAKER_2** (2:29)
Absolutely.
Measles is one of the most infectious diseases that we have. And when I say that, I mean that if you have someone who has influenza, classical flu, and they're in a completely susceptible population, they'll give flu to about two people. So they have what's called an epidemiology, a study of how diseases spread and are not of two. In a completely susceptible population, someone with measles will give measles to about 19 people. That is potential for just explosive growth. And by susceptible people, we mean people who either didn't have measles as children, which is everybody in the United States born before 1954, we presume immunity, or who weren't vaccinated. And what I will say is that the data for people who have had measles certainly in Michigan is that 100% of them, all 14 of them, were not vaccinated against measles.

**SPEAKER_3** (3:27)
I know that you can't get the MMR vaccine until you're six months old. Is that correct?

**SPEAKER_2** (3:33)
That's correct, yep.

**SPEAKER_3** (3:34)
For those families who maybe have children who are too young to get the measles vaccine, is there a way for them to safely travel right now?

**SPEAKER_2** (3:43)
I don't think that we're seeing people change travel plans based on this at this point. I would say this is a dynamic situation, but right now, no, I wouldn't change travel plans based on this. What I would do though is ensure that everybody who you're traveling with and everybody that you're seeing, if you are a parent of someone younger than six months old, that they are immune to measles. Because the way that we protect people who can't be vaccinated, either because they're too young or like many people, they have some immunosuppression.
They may have had a bone marrow transplant, they may have an autoimmune disease that needs to be on severe immunosuppression for one of many reasons. As we vaccinated everybody around them, part of the reason that everybody getting vaccinated is so important is certainly for our own health. The individual risk benefit to any vaccine that makes it to market in the United States is firmly in favor of vaccination. And the MMR and MMRV are some of our best studied, most known, clearest benefit and most effective vaccines that we have. But we also do it to protect babies and people who can't be vaccinated for a host of reasons. And so I'm the mother of very young children. And I rely on everybody else. Everybody in my family is vaccinated and everybody that we see is vaccinated. But when I take my kids out, I rely on our community to also be vaccinated.