US Measles Cases Top 2,371, Topping 2025's Total, as RFK Jr. Tells Parents to Vaccinate While Pushing MMR Breakup

The measles numbers are bad and getting worse. The CDC has confirmed 2,371 cases nationwide this year, according to The Guardian, already surpassing 2025's full-year total of 2,289. The last time the country saw more cases in a single year was 1991.

Pennsylvania is one of the hot spots. The state's measles dashboard showed 226 cases as of August 7, according to WITF, with Lancaster County alone accounting for 132 of them, the largest outbreak in the state. More than 30 people statewide have been hospitalized. Dr. Jeffrey Martin, chair of family and community medicine at Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health, said the surge is unlike anything he's seen in 30 years. None of the Pennsylvania patients diagnosed this year were fully vaccinated, per state data cited by WITF.

Outbreaks are also active in Ohio, Utah and Virginia, according to The Independent, which reported Pennsylvania saw more cases in a single week than at any point in the past decade, citing the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Dr. Andrew Lutzkanin of Penn State Health told the Post-Gazette that "a virus that's as infectious and easily transmittable as measles is going to take off." Utah state epidemiologist Leisha Nolen told the Associated Press in June the state just needs "those few cases to hit the wrong community" for another flare-up.

Nationally, 93% of infected people are unvaccinated, according to CDC data cited by The Independent. Children and teenagers make up most of the cases. Two doses of the MMR vaccine offer lifelong protection and are considered safe by mainstream medical consensus. Untreated, measles can cause pneumonia, blindness, brain swelling, and death.

Kennedy tells parents to vaccinate, then blames religious communities

Against that backdrop, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told CNN's Dana Bash on State of the Union that "parents should get their children vaccinated for measles," adding the vaccine "stops measles in about 97% of the cases," according to The Guardian. That statement stands out because Kennedy spent years before and after joining the Trump administration amplifying doubts about vaccine safety and efficacy, including around MMR specifically.

Asked directly whether he bears any responsibility for the current surge, Kennedy said "absolutely not," and instead pointed to religious communities that decline vaccination and to global health conditions, per The Guardian's account of the interview.

Parents who worry about medical mandates or side effects are not automatically acting in bad faith, and some communities have genuine religious or philosophical objections that predate any current political controversy. The epidemiological reality, however, is stark. Kindergarten vaccination coverage has been declining since before COVID, and one in four kindergarten classes nationally are now below the immunity threshold needed to stop measles from spreading, according to the Post-Gazette's April investigation cited by The Independent. That's not a hypothetical risk. It's the mechanism driving the outbreaks already underway.

Trump's executive order complicates Kennedy's message

Eight days after that interview, President Trump signed an executive order on Monday, August 10, calling for childhood vaccines to be administered during separate visits and for the eventual breakup of the combined MMR shot, according to The Advocate. Trump was flanked by NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya and Kennedy while signing it, and made unsupported claims that the MMR vaccine could be "quite lethal" and "explosive."

There is no scientific evidence supporting those characterizations. The order drew immediate criticism from pediatricians and infectious disease specialists. Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who previously led the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases before departing the agency, told The Advocate the order amounted to "public health policy by vibes" and said it was created "through hearsay and based on the bad advice from the health Secretary and his conflicted advisors."

Separately, FactCheck.org documented a string of false and baseless claims Kennedy made in that same August 2 CNN interview, including that RSV and Lyme disease originated from "gain-of-function" lab research. Dr. Ferric Fang, a physician-scientist at the University of Washington School of Medicine, told FactCheck.org those claims are "unquestionably false." Lyme-causing bacteria have been traced in North America for roughly 60,000 years and were found in 5,300-year-old remains of the Tyrolean Iceman. Kennedy also repeated the claim that gain-of-function research caused COVID-19, which FactCheck.