The US recorded 2,030 confirmed measles cases on June 4, according to The Guardian, drawing within striking distance of the 2,228 cases reported for all of 2025 and on track to become the worst measles year in decades. Infectious disease experts told the publication they believe the actual infection count is about three times higher than the confirmed figure, as the virus spreads through undervaccinated communities.
Dr. Andrew Pavia, a George and Esther Gross presidential professor at the University of Utah, said he expected transmission to continue through the summer. “I think it’s going to be a busy summer,” Pavia told The Guardian, speaking in his personal capacity as an infectious disease expert.
Utah’s outbreak has been distinctive in its geographic breadth. “What makes Utah different than South Carolina and Texas is that it spread throughout the entire state and became much more widely distributed,” Pavia said. Cases in Utah now appear to be winding down, but new clusters are emerging in Virginia and Pennsylvania.
Pavia attributed the spread in Utah to two factors: low vaccination rates in certain communities and limited local public health capacity. The state’s decentralized public health system shifted most of the response to local departments, many of which were already strained. “Some of these small health departments are very stressed for personnel, funds, and training, particularly after the massive cuts that the administration made to pass-through money that went to state and local health departments — I think it was $11 billion they took away,” Pavia said.
The outbreak has also exposed gaps in political leadership. Pavia noted that Utah Governor Spencer Cox “has not uttered the word ‘measles’ since 2024,” and that the state health department had to clear all announcements through political leadership, making its response less visible than in other states. He contrasted the approach with South Carolina, where the governor and state health director gave regular updates and “spoke with one voice about the need for containment.”
South Carolina’s outbreak, which climbed to nearly 1,000 documented cases — likely 2,000 to 3,000 in actuality, according to experts — was officially declared contained in late April. During the peak, at least one young boy was hospitalized with measles encephalitis. Dr. Annie Andrews, a pediatrician in the state, described watching the crisis unfold as “incredibly frustrating.”
“None of this had to happen. This was entirely preventable, and this is a direct result of decades’ worth of vaccine misinformation and disinformation,” Andrews told The Guardian.
A new analysis cited by The Guardian found that US poison control centers reported a 38.7% increase in exposures to vitamin A in early 2025, an unproven treatment touted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services. Internet searches for the treatment also surged. Kennedy has framed measles vaccination as a personal choice even as the outbreak has continued to grow.
Andrews pointed to Kennedy’s influence as a factor undermining public health efforts. “RFK Jr has been one of the figures leading that spread of disinformation,” she said. “We are nowhere out of the woods from this anti-science era we find ourselves in here in South Carolina and in other places across the country.”
The virus has hit the most vulnerable particularly hard. Infants under 12 months of age are not routinely vaccinated and cannot receive the measles shot before six months, leaving them exposed during outbreaks. In Texas, a baby born to a mother with active measles was hospitalized with acute measles meningoencephalitis, according to a report published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
Pavia recalled a time when measles commanded widespread fear. “Everyone knew a child who had a bad outcome from measles, and they didn’t take measles for granted. That’s no longer true,” he said. Patients now arriving with symptoms — intense light sensitivity, painful diarrhea, high fevers — tell clinicians the same thing: “This was worse than anybody told me it was going to be.”
Andrews, who is now running for US Senate in South Carolina, said physicians must do more to counter misinformation online. “Pediatricians and other physicians created a vacuum in social media spaces that allowed RFK Jr and other anti-science, anti-vaccine influencers to fill that void,” she said. “That’s where real people are, that’s where our patients are getting their information, and because we didn’t engage there, the disinformation took over, and it’s going to take us so long to claw back at that, to regain the trust.”
If elected, Andrews would be the first woman physician in the Senate and the first pediatrician ever to serve there. “There’s never been a more urgent need for scientifically literate, data-driven lawmakers to be in the rooms where these conversations are happening,” she said.