The CDC's measles case count held at 1,893 confirmed cases this week, with no new dashboard update since the May 14 print. Of the seven indicators the agency uses to maintain measles elimination status, four are now being missed; PAHO's regional review remains scheduled for November. [1]

The plain-English version: "elimination" is the World Health Organization's technical term for measles that has been kept out of a country for at least 12 months without sustained domestic transmission. The U.S. received that status in 2000. To keep it, the CDC and PAHO measure things like vaccination coverage, surveillance speed, and chain-of-transmission duration; missing four of seven for long enough costs the country the label. The 1,893-case total is already 83% of last year's full-year total — the highest five-month count since 1992 — and Utah's outbreak alone accounted for 663 cases as of May 12. [2]

The paper's May 20 brief took the position that the counter and the November clock both held. Both still hold. The next CDC dashboard refresh, the next PAHO communication, and any U.S. policy response to the Bangladesh High Court's parallel measles ruling will be the next things that move the file. Until then, the figure to remember is the four missed indicators, not just the case count.

-- NORA WHITFIELD, Chicago