US could lose measles-free status as a PAHO expert panel meets in Washington

Expert panel weighs the designation

The United States could lose its measles elimination status, held since 2000, when a decision is announced on Tuesday, 17 November. A panel of eight independent experts is meeting in Washington as part of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the regional branch of the World Health Organization (WHO). PAHO's annual meeting runs until 13 November, and the panel deliberates behind closed doors. Each of the 35 member states in the Americas was asked to file a measles status report for the panel to review. After the recommendations, PAHO director Jarbas Barbosa takes the final decision on each country and passes it to national authorities, a PAHO spokesperson said.

Outbreak figures differ by source

The US is in its worst measles outbreak since 1991, and the totals reported so far vary with the scope of each count. A tracker run by the Johns Hopkins University International Vaccine Access Center lists more than 5,400 cases nationally. US authorities have registered nearly 7,500 cases and eleven deaths since early 2025, and infections in 2026 have more than doubled compared with 2025. Six people have died in Pennsylvania in 2026, while a child in New York and an infant in Wisconsin also died. Nearly every US state has an active outbreak.

Timeline of the review

The sequence runs from the 2000 designation to the announcement expected on Tuesday, 17 November. Scientists who analyzed public data for The New York Times concluded the virus is circulating in the US, 26 years after it was declared eliminated. Coverage indicates the designation itself would not change the CDC's approach. Mexico and Bolivia are also on PAHO's watch list because of prolonged outbreaks. Canada, Spain, the United Kingdom and several other countries lost their measles-free status earlier after a WHO review, and the US withdrew from the WHO under Trump but remains in PAHO.

Political reaction

Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has for years voiced doubts, without scientific evidence, about the safety of measles vaccines. Public health experts say measures he took to reduce childhood vaccinations have deepened hesitancy and helped drive the highest infection rate in more than three decades. The US Department of Health and Human Services responded that vaccination rates were already falling before Kennedy took office. Paul Offit, a prominent critic of Kennedy, described a possible loss of the status in these terms.

“That is a tremendous step backwards.”

CDC director Erica Schwartz said the agency works with states to contain outbreaks, focusing on communities where immunization has trended lower for decades. She said that losing the status would leave that work unchanged.

“we're going to be doing the same exact thing that we've been doing today”

Vaccination advice and risk

Two doses of the MMR vaccine are 97% effective against measles, and about one in five unvaccinated people who become infected are hospitalized. Dr David Margolius, the director of public health in Cleveland, Ohio, is urging residents to find proof of their measles vaccination in case they are exposed to a measles-positive patient. Doctors in Britain and the US are urging women to be vaccinated before pregnancy after the death of a mother in the US. Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, argued that the virus is established in the US regardless of what PAHO decides.

“Independent of what PAHO says, measles is now endemic in the US.”