Michigan joins six other states with measles outbreaks

Michigan officials confirmed a new measles outbreak Thursday near Grand Rapids, bringing the US to seven states with active outbreaks of the vaccine-preventable disease. Last week, US measles cases topped 700, with Texas reporting the majority of them. Two unvaccinated elementary school-aged children died from measles-related illnesses near the epicenter of the outbreak in rural West Texas. An adult in New Mexico who was not vaccinated also died of a measles-related illness. Even as the virus continued to spread and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention redeployed a team to West Texas, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed in a televised Cabinet meeting Thursday that measles cases were plateauing nationally. The US has more than double the number of measles cases it saw in all of 2024.

States with active outbreaks — defined as three or more cases —include Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Oklahoma, Ohio, Texas and New Mexico. The multistate outbreak across Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Kansas confirms health experts’ fears that the virus will take hold in other US communities with low vaccination rates and that the spread could stretch on for a year. The World Health Organization has said cases in Mexico are linked to the Texas outbreak.

Measles is caused by a highly contagious virus that’s airborne and spreads easily when an infected person breathes, sneezes or coughs. It is preventable through vaccines, and has been considered eliminated from the US since 2000. Here’s what else you need to know about measles in the US Texas’ outbreak began in late January. State health officials said Tuesday there were 20 new cases of measles since Friday, bringing the total to 561 across 23 counties — most of them in West Texas. Two more Texans were hospitalized, for a total of 58 throughout the outbreak, and Reeves County logged its first case.

State health officials estimated Tuesday that about 4% of cases — fewer than 25 — are actively infectious.

Sixty-five per cent of Texas’ cases are in Gaines County, population 22,892, where the virus started spreading in a close-knit, undervaccinated Mennonite community. The county has logged 364 cases since late January — just over 1% of the county’s residents.

The April 3 death in Texas was an 8-year-old child, according to Kennedy. Health officials in Texas said the child did not have underlying health conditions and died of “what the child’s doctor described as measles pulmonary failure.” A unvaccinated child with no underlying conditions died of measles in Texas in late February — Kennedy said age 6.

New Mexico announced five new cases on Tuesday, bringing the state’s total to 63. Three more people are in the hospital, for a total of five since the outbreak started. Doña Ana County reported its first case. Most of the state’s cases are in Lea County. Two are in Eddy County and one in Chaves County. State health officials say the cases are linked to Texas’ outbreak based on genetic testing. New Mexico reported its first measles-related death in an adult on March 6.

Kansas has 37 cases in eight counties in the southwest part of the state, health officials announced on Wednesday. Finney, Ford, Grant, Gray and Morton counties have fewer than five cases each. Haskell County has the most with eight cases, Stevens County has seven, Kiowa County has six. The state’s first reported case, identified in Stevens County on March 13, is linked to the Texas and New Mexico outbreaks based on genetic testing, a state health department spokesperson said. But health officials have not determined how the person was exposed. Cases in Oklahoma remained steady at 12 total cases Tuesday: nine confirmed and three probable. The first two probable cases were “associated” with the West Texas and New Mexico outbreaks, the state health department said.

A state health department spokesperson said measles exposures were confirmed in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, Rogers and Custer counties, but wouldn’t say which counties had cases. The Knox County outbreak in east-central Ohio has infected a total 20 people as of Tuesday, according to a news release from the county health department, but seven of them do not live in Ohio. In 2022, a measles outbreak in central Ohio sickened 85.

The Ohio Department of Health confirmed 22 measles cases in the state Thursday. Two counties in the southeast corner of the state logged their first cases of the year: Montgomery and Butler. There are also 11 cases in Ashtabula County near Cleveland, seven in Knox County and one each in Allen and Holmes counties. The state count only includes Ohio residents. The outbreak in Ashtabula County started with an unvaccinated adult who had interacted with someone who had traveled internationally. Indiana confirmed six connected cases of measles in Allen County in the northeast part of the state — four are unvaccinated minors and two are adults whose vaccination status is unknown.