Loss of measles elimination status in the Americas

The Americas were the first region in the world to eliminate measles twice. The region lost its verification after outbreaks in Venezuela in 2018 and Brazil in 2019 and regained it in 2024.

The loss that followed began in Canada. An outbreak that started in October 2024 in the province of New Brunswick spread across the country, with more than 5,000 confirmed cases. On 10 November 2025 the Pan American Health Organization announced that endemic transmission had been reestablished in Canada, where the virus had circulated for at least 12 months, and that the Region of the Americas had therefore lost its verification as free of endemic measles. By 7 November ten countries in the region had reported 12,596 confirmed cases in 2025, 30 times as many as in 2024. Twenty-eight people had died: 23 in Mexico, 3 in the United States and 2 in Canada.

The United States and Mexico had outbreaks of their own, which began on 20 January and 1 February 2025. CDC counted 2,289 confirmed US cases in 2025, 90 percent of them linked to 48 outbreaks, compared with 1,274 cases in 2019. The count kept rising in 2026: by 17 September CDC had recorded 3,471 cases, 39 new outbreaks and one death.

In January 2026 PAHO's regional verification commission invited the two countries to a review of their elimination status on 13 April 2026, a date chosen to give them time to prepare epidemiological and laboratory evidence. In March 2026 PAHO moved that review to the commission's regular annual meeting in November 2026, with the assessment for the United States counted from 20 January 2025.