The CDC's Thursday print, posted Friday morning, now reports 1,952 confirmed measles cases in the United States through May 21 across forty jurisdictions. [1] The federal denominator climbed 110 cases in a week and is now 336 cases shy of 2025's full-year total of 2,288. The 2026 driver is no longer South Carolina, whose outbreak the agency declared officially over on April 29 after forty-two days without a new case; ninety-three percent of confirmed cases (1,815 of 1,952) are outbreak-associated, and twenty-nine new outbreaks have been reported this year. [1]

The paper's Saturday brief at "roughly 1,900" is now openly corrected to 1,952 with the federal Thursday-print convention. The state-vs-federal denominator gap the Saturday brief named has closed: CDC's measles map now sits ahead of CIDRAP's mid-week 1,893 figure rather than behind it, and the agency has refreshed the page from its mid-April lock at 1,748. The Arizona, Utah, North Dakota and Washington dashboards remain consistent with the federal total. [2]

The PAHO Regional Verification Commission meets in November to decide whether the United States keeps the elimination status it earned in 2000. The variable that decides that vote is the rolling weekly new-case rate, not the cumulative total. 110 new cases in a week against a federal threshold of zero endemic transmission across twelve months is the chart that will sit on the Commission's table. The Arizona-Utah cluster and the twenty-nine outbreak count are the operational facts the November vote will turn on. [3]

-- NORA WHITFIELD, Chicago