{"id":11902,"date":"2026-04-29T18:50:01","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T23:50:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=11902"},"modified":"2026-04-29T18:50:04","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T23:50:04","slug":"measles-deaths-are-coming-doctors-are-fighting-an-uphill-battle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2026\/04\/29\/measles-deaths-are-coming-doctors-are-fighting-an-uphill-battle\/","title":{"rendered":"Measles deaths are coming. Doctors are fighting an uphill battle."},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/2026\/04\/28\/america-could-lose-important-measles-status-vaccine-trust-erodes\/\">Washington Post<\/a> OPINION<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.paho.org\/en\/news\/2-3-2026-update-review-measles-elimination-status\">This November<\/a>, the Pan American Health Organization will review whether the United States has lost its measles elimination status \u2014 a designation held since 2000. As of April 23,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/measles\/data-research\/index.html\">1,792 confirmed cases<\/a>\u00a0have been reported across the U.S. Utah is the latest epicenter:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/04\/16\/well\/measles-cases-utah.html\">nearly 600 cases since last summer<\/a>. At one to three deaths per thousand cases, the arithmetic is clear: Deaths are coming. Last year\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/health\/2025\/07\/07\/measles-cases-hit-record\/\">measles outbreak<\/a>\u00a0was the worst since 1992:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/measles\/data-research\/index.html\">2,288 cases<\/a>, three deaths. A 6-year-old unvaccinated girl died of measles pneumonia in Lubbock, Texas, in February 2025 \u2014\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/health\/2025\/02\/26\/measles-texas-unvaccinated-death\/\">the first measles death<\/a>\u00a0in the U.S. in a decade. A second unvaccinated\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/health\/2025\/04\/06\/measles-texas-death-outbreak-vaccine\/\">8-year-old girl died<\/a>\u00a0in the same city weeks later. A\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1001\/jama.2025.6495\">simulation model in JAMA<\/a>\u00a0projects an 83 percent probability that measles will become endemic again in the U.S. within 21 years at current vaccination rates.\u00a0Under a 50 percent decline in childhood vaccination, the model projects up to 159,200 deaths over 25 years from measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases. Measles alone would account for 51.2 million projected cases.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Washington Post OPINION This November, the Pan American Health Organization will review whether the United States has lost its measles elimination status \u2014 a designation held since 2000. As of April 23,\u00a01,792 confirmed cases\u00a0have been reported across the U.S. Utah is the latest epicenter:\u00a0nearly 600 cases since last summer. At one to three deaths per [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-measles"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11902"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11902\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11903,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11902\/revisions\/11903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}