Measles, a highly contagious and viral infection, has skyrocketed in the U.S. due to tumbling vaccination rates as large outbreaks spread across West Texas, eastern New Mexico, and Michigan.
Declared eliminated in 2000 after a year-long national absence of infections, measles cases have now hit a record new high in 2025, with 1,001 confirmed cases across 31 states since late January.
Of those cases, 96 percent were unvaccinated or had an unknown vaccination status, according to the CDC.
Three people, including two young children, have died. All were unvaccinated.
The Independent spoke to the former New York City chief medical officer, Dr. Tyler Evans, who oversaw the city’s response to the COVID pandemic in 2020, to discuss what to do when a deadly virus starts spreading.
Firstly: people “should be double-checking that they and their children have been vaccinated,” he urged.
What is measles, and what are the symptoms?
Measles is a highly contagious viral infection spread by coughing or sneezing that can develop into a serious illness, such as pneumonia and encephalitis, and can be fatal for unvaccinated people.
Groups most vulnerable to the disease include children under five, pregnant women, and people with weakened immune systems, from leukaemia or HIV.
Symptoms, which appear 7 to 14 days after contact with the virus, include fever, cough, runny nose, watery eyes, white spots around the mouth and flat red spots on the face and body.
I’m vaccinated against measles. Am I protected against catching it?
One dose of the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine, which most people receive as children, is sufficient for most adults.
Two doses of the MMR vaccine are about 97 percent effective at preventing measles, whereas one is roughly 93 percent effective, according to the CDC.
Children are usually given the first dose of MMR vaccine around age one and the second between ages four and six.
“When people are not engaged in primary care or population prevention efforts, that’s when infectious disease outbreaks — which could easily be prevented or mitigated or controlled — scale up to epidemics or pandemics,” said Evans, author of Pandemics, Poverty, and Politics: Decoding the Social and Political Drivers of Pandemics from Plague to COVID-19.
Equally, if one person has it, up to nine out of ten people around them will become infected if unvaccinated.
Those born before 1957 are considered exempt because of exposure to the infection in childhood, when it was highly prevalent and ahead of the measles vaccine rollout in 1963; however, experts say this immunity can wane.
Why is it spreading?
Vaccine confidence has plateaued ever since COVID-19, with vaccine conspiracies emerging online that have even been peddled by prominent government officials, like Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
One study that led to a decline in vaccine confidence, and has since been discredited, was the 1998 medical journal study, where now-disgraced doctor Andrew Wakefield falsely linked the MMR vaccine to children developing autism.
Equally, with the onslaught of Covid-19, where some were distrustful of the medical sector, or had doubts over its origin and efficacy, according to a public health study at the time, resulting in parents declining other standard vaccines as well.
What groups are more likely to catch measles?
Most people will have come into contact with measles in their lives, but unvaccinated people are most likely to catch it. There’s an added risk for people working in settings where there are sick people.
“Nurses and teachers, who are on the frontlines in these settings, are especially at risk,” the Ohio Nurses Association said in March.
“It tends to spread in areas of vulnerability,” says Evans, who explained that areas with low vaccine confidence, high poverty, and limited access to clinical providers — like rural west Texas — were most at risk.
One community taking the brunt of cases are the Mennonites in Gaines County – a group within the Anabaptist family of churches, who are known for having a strained and distant relationship with the government and public health bodies. Kayley Fehr, a 6-year-old from the Mennonite community, died in February after contracting measles.
In Gaines County, nearly 14 percent of school-aged children had their parents opt out of giving them at least one required vaccine, reported the Associated Press.
Are RFK Jr’s comments about the MMR vaccine concerning public health experts?
RFK Jr., who is known for peddling pseudoscience, has flip-flopped on his support of the measles vaccine, stating it is “the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles” but also that the “MMR vaccine contains ‘aborted fetus debris’.”
Evans said his claims were “scientifically inaccurate and dangerously misleading”.
“The rubella component of the MMR vaccine was developed decades ago using a well-established human cell line, replicated countless times. There is no actual fetal tissue in the vaccine,” Evans continued.
RJK Jr. attended the funeral of Daisy Hildebrand, an 8-year-old from Seminole, Gaines County who died from measles.
But her father, Pete Hildebrand, revealed that RFK Jr. did not mention the vaccine at all during his visit. “He did not say that the vaccine was effective,” Hildebrand told The Guardian. “I had supper with the guy…and he never said anything about that.”
Evans believes that the road to rebuilding trust around vaccine confidence was going to take a long time, particularly in the age of Trump.
“We never thought vaccinations would become a divisive factor in modern politics,” he said.
