Ave Maria University, a private Catholic institution twenty-five miles northeast of Naples, has confirmed at least fifty-seven measles cases among its students this spring — the largest single-campus outbreak in the United States this year. Collier County, where the university sits, has reported eighty-three cases. [1] The campus cluster was first confirmed on January 29 with three cases, passed fifty by February 10, and has trickled in through April. [2]

What distinguishes Ave Maria from the two hundred other American universities that require MMR vaccination is a waiver policy: students can decline the shot by signing a form without giving a specific reason. [1] The Florida Department of Health, which updates county measles counts weekly, has not said how many of the university's cases were unvaccinated, but the vast majority of 2025 and 2026 American measles infections have been in people who were either unvaccinated or of unknown status. The DOH is offering free MMR doses at its Naples and Immokalee clinics.

The national picture puts Ave Maria in context. South Carolina leads the 2026 count with 553 cases, concentrated in Spartanburg County. Utah has 48. Arizona has 34. Florida, with 21 confirmed cases, is now fourth — a rank it owes almost entirely to Ave Maria and the secondary cases the campus has seeded in Collier County. Measles was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000. Last year's total was 2,280. The arithmetic of declared elimination now depends on how many Catholic, home-schooled and rural communities fall below the herd-immunity threshold. The 2025 and 2026 case counts are answering that question.

The Ave Maria administration has continued to post weekly campus updates. The last one listed seven students as currently contagious. [3] The university is not closing. The semester ends in ten days.

-- NORA WHITFIELD, Chicago