Scientists feel that measles is likely to become endemic in the US over the next 20 years

Vaccination rates In recent years, the decline has steadily declined among kindergarteners, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of Health and Human Services, has vowed to reconsider his childhood vaccination schedule. a New analysis Published today by an epidemiologist at Stanford University, it seeks to quantify their effects.

Using computer models, the authors discovered that current state-level vaccination rates mean that measles could reestablish themselves and could be consistently present in the US over the next 20 years. Their model predicted this result in 83% of the simulations. If current vaccination rates remain the same, the model estimated that the US could see more than 850,000 cases, 170,000 hospitalizations and 2,500 deaths over the next 25 years. The results will be displayed in American Medical Association Journal.

“I don’t think this is speculative. It’s a modeling exercise, but it’s based on good numbers,” said Jeffrey Griffith, a professor of public health and community medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, who was not involved in the research. “The big point is that if you continue like this, there’s a very high chance that measles will become rapidly endemic.”

The US declared that measles was eliminated in 2000 after decades of vaccination campaigns. Removal means there was no chain of disease transmission in the country that lasted more than 12 months. However, the current outbreak of measles in Texas could put that status at risk. With over 600 cases, 64 hospitalizations and two deaths, it is the largest outbreak that the state has had since 1992, when 990 cases were associated with a single outbreak. The US has seen nationwide 800 measles cases in 2025the most since 2019. Last year there were 285 cases.

Matthew Kian, an assistant professor of epidemiology and population health at Stanford University and one of the authors of the paper, said:

Childhood vaccinations in the United States are on a downward trend. Data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from state and local vaccination programs was found to be targeted at kindergarten children who received nationally strengthened vaccination from the 2019-2020 grades to the 2022-2023 grades. It has decreased from 95% to about 93%. These vaccines included MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella), DTAP (Diphtheria, Tetanus, and Acellular Pretussis), polio, and chicken pox.

In the current study, Kian and his colleagues modeled each state individually, taking into account vaccination rates. This was 88% to 96% for measles, 78% to 91% for diphtheria, and 90% to 97% for polio vaccines. Other variables include population demographics, vaccine efficacy, risk of import of disease, typical duration of infection, time between exposure and disease spread, and the infectiousness of the disease, also known as basic breeding numbers. Measles is highly contagious, with an average of 12-18 people being infected. The researchers used 12 as the basic breeding number for the study.