The CDC's weekly update on April 17 put the 2026 measles count at 1,748 confirmed cases as of April 16, across 33 jurisdictions — six days after HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told Congress that the United States leads the world on containment, a comparison the paper traced Monday in the day-five Texas watch. [1] Ninety-four percent are outbreak-associated — 388 from outbreaks that began this year, 1,249 from outbreaks carried over from 2025. There have been 19 new outbreaks reported in 2026, compared with 48 for all of last year. The week's increase was 34 cases, roughly a fifth of the 96-case jump two weeks earlier.

That trajectory still runs ahead of 2025, when the United States recorded 2,288 confirmed cases and three deaths — the country's largest annual total since 1991. [2] The 2026 count at four months is already 76 percent of last year's full-year number. No measles-related deaths have been confirmed yet this year; 96 patients, or roughly six percent, have been hospitalized.

Six days have passed since HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told the House Education and Workforce Committee that "the measles outbreak is not an American phenomenon" and that under his leadership, the U.S. is "limiting the spread of measles better than any other country in the world." [3] The AP FACT FOCUS on that testimony, published the same day, found the comparison does not survive the data: measles is surging globally, and neighboring Mexico and Canada have seen bigger 2025-2026 outbreaks than the U.S., but the U.S. is "getting worse, not better" at preventing domestic spread, because vaccination rates are falling. National two-dose MMR coverage has declined from 95.2 percent in 2019-20 to 92.5 percent in 2024-25, against the 95 percent threshold required for herd immunity. [3]

The paper's April 21 account of the Texas watch on day five noted that the Mexico-Canada comparison had not been revised. It has not been revised on day six. Acting CDC Director Jay Bhattacharya's March 2 video message endorsing MMR vaccination remains the most recent formal HHS response to the trajectory; no new statement has been issued since Kennedy's testimony. [4]

Vaccination rates are the lever in every model. Measles requires 95 percent two-dose MMR coverage to prevent sustained transmission. Below that threshold, the virus finds unvaccinated pockets — the 92 percent of 2026 cases among people who are unvaccinated or of unknown status mirrors last year's figure almost exactly. [1] Twenty-one percent of this year's patients are children under five; 73 percent are under 20.

The Pan American Health Organization is scheduled to assess U.S. measles elimination status, which the country has held since 2000, at its rescheduled November meeting after Washington asked for a delay. [4] If the 2026 trajectory holds, the U.S. will enter that meeting with more measles cases than any year since 1991. The metric Kennedy used on April 17 is still the framing HHS has not walked back.

-- NORA WHITFIELD, Chicago