The country hasn't been able to curb an outbreak of more than 5,000 cases over the last year, while US cases are at a 33-year high.
Nadine YousifSenior Canada reporter
Canada has lost its measles elimination status, said the Pan American Health Organization (Paho) on Monday, after failing to curb an outbreak of the virus for 12 consecutive months.
Because Canada is no longer deemed measles-free, the Americas region as a whole has lost its elimination status, although individually the other countries are still considered to have stamped out the disease.
The US, however, risks losing its status as well if it does not stop an ongoing outbreak by January. Related cases have now been reported in Utah, Arizona and South Carolina.
Canada's outbreak began last October, with health officials attributing it to fewer people being vaccinated against measles.
At a news conference on Monday, Paho officials appealed to Canadian governments and the public to ramp up vaccinations, noting that 95% of the population needs to be immunised to stop the spread of measles.
"This loss represents a setback, but it is also reversible," said Dr Jarbas Barbosa, the health organisation's director.
The Public Health Agency of Canada said in its own statement that it is collaborating with Paho and regional health authorities to improve vaccine rates and strengthen data sharing.
Prior to Monday, Canada had been declared measles-free for three decades. It can regain its elimination status if it can curb spread of the measles strain associated with the current outbreak for at least 12 months.
The country has reported more than 5,000 measles cases in 2025, with most of them in the provinces of Ontario and Alberta. That is three times the 1,681 cases reported in the US, despite Canada's much smaller population.
The bulk of the outbreak has been in "under-vaccinated communities", Canadian health officials have said.
Vaccination rates in Alberta, one of the provinces hit hard by the outbreak, are lower than the 95% threshold, according to provincial data.
One region, the South Zone, located south of the province's largest city Calgary, reported only 68% of children under the age of two were immunised against measles as of 2024.
The MMR vaccine is the most effective way to fight off the dangerous virus, which can lead to pneumonia, brain swelling and death. The jabs are 97% effective and also immunise against mumps and rubella.
Canadian immunologist Dawn Bowdish told the BBC that there are many reasons behind the low vaccination rates, including lack of access to general practitioners, the absence of a national vaccination registry that Canadians could use to check their immunisation status, and the spread of misinformation.
She also noted a lack of public health outreach to communities that have been hesitant or distrustful of vaccines.
"It highlights how many of our systems broke down to get us to this point," said Prof Bowdish of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
"I hope that it will be a wake-up call to policymakers, and that it will be enough of a national embarrassment that we remedy some of those systemic issues," she added
The Americas is the first and only region in the world to have been declared measles-free, starting in 2016. That status was then briefly lifted after outbreaks in Venezuela and Brazil. The two countries regained elimination status in 2024, in part through coordinated vaccine efforts where millions were immunised.
But measles has since spread again, now in North America.
Along with Canada and the United States, Mexico has also seen a surge in cases and now ranks among the top 10 countries with the largest outbreaks, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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Here's the origin of the outbreak:
> Public health officials say it started when an international traveller attended a wedding in New Brunswick last October. New Brunswick's outbreak ended in January, but guests at that wedding had already brought the virus to southwestern Ontario, where that province's outbreak was concentrated among closely knit Mennonite communities.
International travel + spread among low-vaccination communities.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/livestory/canada-measles-elim...
By canucker2016 2025-11-1116:522 reply from https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/article/not-surprising-heres-w...
Certain religious and cultural groups, including Mennonite populations — where the first outbreak began on Oct. 27, 2024, after an international traveller from Thailand attended a wedding in New Brunswick and guests then returned to southwestern Ontario — and Amish populations, were disproportionately affected.By canucker2016 2025-11-1117:171 reply A reporter from The Globe and Mail, Nathan Vanderklippe, did a deep dive into the measles outbreak in New Brunswick/Ontario/Alberta/Texas.
see https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-measles-outbre...
or non-paywalled version
https://web.archive.org/web/20250922034906/https://www.thegl...
or if you want to watch/listen
By Voultapher 2025-11-1119:181 reply > Measles, a dangerous illness that for decades has rarely infected Canadians, is back – and spreading. [...] Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., left, now the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services, stands with protesters in Olympia, Wash., in 2019, opposing a bill to tighten measles, mumps and rubella vaccine requirements for school-aged children.
Reading this, it's a challenge to feel empathy. Everyone deserves some degree of empathy, idiots too. Yet this topic seems so needlessly self inflicted. Maybe it's a more nuanced topic than I'm aware of, is there a strong argument against vaccination?
By SAI_Peregrinus 2025-11-1120:021 reply There's a fraudulent argument against vaccination. Unfortunately many people believe the fraudsters.
By josefritzishere 2025-11-1120:311 reply RFK... sigh
By actionfromafar 2025-11-1123:132 reply Antichrist?
By red-iron-pine 2025-11-1221:37 if ever there was someone that met that definition, it would be him
presumably that's why peter thiel went on his spiel about the antichrist -- because he's met him, and is trying to get out in front of it
By rickydroll 2025-11-123:11 no, antivax
/s
There are different sources of antivax attitudes in different communities. For some, there's a religious or cultural basis. For others, they are simply the victims of a well-funded and concerted misinformation campaign.
A good example if the ultra-orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn for whom a gloosy booklet seems to bear a lot of responsibility [1] and this predates Covid. It's particularly interesting because certain preventable diseases can cause male infertility.
This became such a big problem that Israel had to counter this misinformation so ultra-Orthodox communities would get Covid vaccines [2].
None of this came from any form of Judaism.
[1]: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/brooklyn-measles-outbre...
[2]: https://www.npr.org/2021/04/22/988812635/how-israel-persuade...
By marcosdumay 2025-11-1119:20 > religious or cultural basis .... a well-funded and concerted misinformation campaign
There's way less difference between those two things than their different names imply.
By giarc 2025-11-1117:59 The outbreak then spread to Alberta where travelers returned from a wedding in southwestern Ontario. However, there was at least 6 unique entries into Alberta so it wasn't a single outbreak, but in fact, 6 separate outbreaks. Some entered the province following travel to Mexico, again to attend weddings I believe.
International travel also implicates the poorly vaccinated - the ones who received the cheaper form of the inoculation.
By ndsipa_pomu 2025-11-1210:291 reply I had no idea that there were different tiers of inoculation - how does that work? Do the cheaper ones intentionally use the wrong virus or something?
Edit: after a brief search, it appears you are mistaken about the efficacy of different measles vaccines - they are all effective.
Public health guidance contraindicates live measles vaccines in significantly immunocompromised patients.
Live measles vaccines are most commonly used in the most deeply poverty-stricken regions,
where nobody is differentiating between the immunocompromised, and the rest of the line of scared people.
By DANmode 2025-11-1217:54
By buellerbueller 2025-11-1116:522 reply [flagged]
Historically, these outbreaks have nothing to do with "MAHA"/RFK types. It's religious fundamentalist groups that lack herd immunity (because nobody in the community is vaccinated) every time.
By intermerda 2025-11-1117:591 reply And yet, the parent of one such child who died of measles because of being unvaccinated went on video for Children’s Health Defense (RFK's anti-vaccine group) to claim how vaccines are bad and measles are good.
The claim that these the religious fundamentalist groups have nothing to do with anti-vaccine propaganda inflicted by MAHA types is disingenuous or simply poorly informed.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/anti-vaccine-infl...
Please go ahead and find me a transmission chain of any of these nearly eradicated infectious diseases that went through someone involved in MAHA or Children's Health Defense. If you go looking, you will find that every single outbreak of Measles, Polio, or any similar disease in North America goes through a fundamentalist religious community. The Wakefield/RFK groups are really not large or tightly-connected enough to do this.
What you can blame RFK for (and what you should blame him for) is cutting funding to identify these possible transmission events and intercept them. This is an area where the Trump admin made severe cuts, on the back of RFK's ideological bent against the concept of infectious disease and the "government efficiency" wave. As a result, responses to outbreaks in these religious communities are much, much slower. It is not a "MAHA wave" that is causing outbreaks like this, it's the loss of funding.
By hombre_fatal 2025-11-121:031 reply RFKjr and the 2019 Samoa measles outbreak comes to mind where he went to Samoa to boost vaccine hesitancy after some kids died due to a mistakenly adulterated vaccination.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Samoa_measles_outbreak
This kind of messaging is why Samoa had 30% vaccination rate while nearby islands had 99% vaccination when measles infected the island later that same year.
I don’t see how you can dismiss RFKjr’s messaging. Are you claiming he has no impact on public opinion?
By pclmulqdq 2025-11-122:24 Sorry, can you point to where Samoa is on a map of North America?
The messaging gets a few thousand kooks riled up, and it's been going back decades to the Wakefield study and all the random kooks who think their child got autism from a vaccine. RFK is not new. His message is marginally more popular in the US, but it is not causing a huge wave of vaccine hesitancy.
Places like Samoa have additional problems with vaccination in that the standard of care isn't that high and sometimes those errors cause people to avoid care. In the Samoa case you cited there, the inciting incident involved two kids dying due to a nurse's error which wasn't investigated. If getting a vaccine involves some risk of getting poisoned by an incompetent nurse, you might also think twice about getting a vaccine. This is very different than the RFK situation of yelling about things that don't happen (vaccines causing autism, birth defects, etc.).
By buellerbueller 2025-11-1117:016 reply These religious fundamentalist groups have always existed, yet Canada and other places eliminated measles. I wonder what changed?
Oh yeah, the spread of misinformation on the internet.
What changed was less funding to the agencies that surveil for disease spread so they can intercept outbreaks. The US CDC funded these programs all over the world.
By buellerbueller 2025-11-1214:40 And still did until this year. American vaccine hesitancy has grown since long before even covid.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/data-investigatio...
Just stop sanewashing this.
By renewiltord 2025-11-1117:27 What changed was that they were free-riders on the rest of the population and one day the rest of the population no longer met the threshold.
One could say it is because of the spread of misinformation and that might be the proximate cause.
But if a drug addict periodically overdoses and needs naloxone, and one day a supply chain issue makes it hard to access and he dies, did the supply chain kill him or his drug addiction? Perhaps monocausal explanations are insufficient.
It's a little hard to believe that people who famously don't use computers were infected by an "misinformation", a rather loathsome neologism. There was famously a really serious outbreak in the NYC Orthodox community from 1989 to about 1991. Unvaccinated communities are a sort of immunological tinder box, and you never know when a stray spark might land.
This is the result of a failure of public health to reach out to these religious communities in effective ways for decades.
By Retric 2025-11-1117:59 That stray spark’s survival is heavily influenced by the herd immunity of the rest of the population.
Put another way if the overall population sees an average of 0.5 or 0.95 infections per case there’s zero chance of a huge outbreak. But odds of a case making it to a vulnerable population is wildly higher in the second case.
By joecool1029 2025-11-1118:12 > There was famously a really serious outbreak in the NYC Orthodox community from 1989 to about 1991.
They never really stopped, it's been every few years since then: https://forward.com/news/417390/measles-is-hitting-ultra-ort...
The Amish are/were undervaccinated but it wasn't due to religious objections. It just seems uncommon in communities to see a dr, unless it's needed: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/ohio-amish-reconsider-va... It's also hard to get an official count (I've seen estimates below 20% vs almost 90% for non-amish communities in same state, but then you read stuff like this which suggests even the old older is above 80% https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article-abstract/128... ) since these communities are grandfathered into their own healthcare systems and often exempt from the normal federal welfare systems: https://www.ssa.gov/faqs/en/questions/KA-02411.html
I'm not sure about Mennonites. One of their communities writes about it and seems to suggest only 1 of the 40 or so communities is hardliners against vaccination. But I also note this is written in a really neutral way (could be to placate government, dunno): https://www.mennoniteusa.org/measles/
I think the point was, it's not limited to those isolated groups anymore.
By ch4s3 2025-11-1222:09 It mostly is limited to people in those groups or people in contact with them. [1] The big hot spot in Alberta is the Mennonite community.
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-mexican-menno...
By sanktanglia 2025-11-1118:29 They don't use computers but they turned up for trump so they are definitely falling for misinformation somewhere
By buellerbueller 2025-11-1118:441 reply It's not the amish whose vaccination status changed. It's the maha fools who fell for vaccine misinformation whose vax status did.
By ch4s3 2025-11-1222:03 But it's the Mennonites who were the source and primary locus of the outbreak, not some MAHA dummies.
By truth13told 2025-11-1117:10 [dead]
By delaminator 2025-11-1117:241 reply [flagged]
Mass immigration from countries where measles is endemic? India has over 10,000 cases per year and makes up the plurality of Canada's immigration intake. Canada has a very high two-shot vaccination rate, but there are pockets like the Mennonite communities that are vulnerable.
Up-to-date vaccination list is a requirement for immigrant visa in Canada.
By delaminator 2025-11-1214:48 https://www.cnbctv18.com/india/healthcare/as-the-number-of-f...
57% of drs are fake, do you think 100% the certificates are genuine?
By pseudo0 2025-11-1118:31 Only for stays greater than six months. So an unvaccinated person can fly in from wherever and stay for 180 days legally, or just overstay their visa. That's plenty of time to spread measles.
By eldaisfish 2025-11-1118:002 reply this is a racist dog whistle. Stop with the "mass immigration" BS.
India, contrary to what the racists believe, has a long and successful vaccination program. A country of 1.5 billion people has around a 70% MMR vaccination rate among infants. Canada's in the 80% range and dropping.
By pseudo0 2025-11-1118:40 Canada had eliminated measles, it was reintroduced by travel from a country where measles was endemic. This is not rocket science. High-volume international travel from countries where measles is endemic, like India, poses a public health risk to countries that have eliminated the disease. The same goes for tuberculosis, hepatitis, etc.
By delaminator 2025-11-1214:49 And half the doctors are fake
https://www.cnbctv18.com/india/healthcare/as-the-number-of-f...
By koakuma-chan 2025-11-1117:45 [flagged]
By truth13told 2025-11-1117:07 [dead]
Alberta now accounts for 38% of the cases
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-measles-statu...
By gpm 2025-11-1117:04 And 12% of the population for context.
By red-iron-pine 2025-11-1221:39 Alberta -- just AB -- had more cases than the entire US for some time
By thinkingkong 2025-11-1116:193 reply The vaccination rates in some parts of Alberta are less than 30%. Per capita, Alberta has the highest incident rate. The rhetoric around vaccinations, social media, a perhaps complacency towards distant threats have all contributed to this situation.
The challenge is that solving this is easier but only if people are willing to get vaccinated.
By mullingitover 2025-11-1116:231 reply There’s, ironically, heavy overlap between the group who insist that we crack down on society’s ‘freeloaders’ and the group that freeloads on those who responsibly vaccinate.
The assertion is that political conservatives are more likely to oppose vaccination. Can the source be my own eyes?
> Can the source be my own eyes?
Sure, we just call that an anecdote, and deprecate it appropriately.
By immibis 2025-11-1122:50 The HN users told me to reject the evidence of my eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential request.
By vacuity 2025-11-1121:46 Both of your comments are rather silly.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/09/06/partisan-...
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/23/gop-voters-vaccines...
By giarc 2025-11-1118:03 The Hutterites in Alberta, from what I've heard on various talks etc, aren't anti-vaxx in the traditional sense. There is definitely some attitudes like that, but the reason the vaccination rate was so slow was a mix of distrust of healthcare professionals and also difficulty in accessing the vaccine. People would have to travel to a public health clinic which is typically quite far away. The uptake in vaccine rates among these groups in Alberta has actually gone way up since the outbreak, and since the healthcare organization has made the vaccine more readily available.
By themafia 2025-11-1118:56 [flagged]
The Canadian outbreaks were driven by traditionalist Mennonites. Neither social media nor immigration (20th/21st century, anyway) were significant.
By theoldgreybeard 2025-11-1116:592 reply The last time I was on a bus travelling out east, there was a Mennonite man who was talking about vaccines with the bus driver. I was surprised to overhear that he was pro vaccine, and that there isn't anything in his belief system that mandates he be anti-vaccine.
So I don't know what drives the anti-vaxx view for Mennonites, but from what this man was saying it doesn't seem to be something that is inherent to being a Mennonite (like blood transfusions for JWs).
By analog31 2025-11-1118:27 I live in a region with a lot of Amish and Mennonite groups. As I understand it, there's no central authority, but each community can make their own rules. Also, he may have been following his own instincts, independent of his sect.
By jamincan 2025-11-1118:45 I wonder if it's simply the fact that there really isn't anything driving them to get their kids vaccinated rather than a particular religious conviction. In Ontario, the old-order Mennonite and Amish groups have separate schooling for their kids and aren't integrated into the medical system here (not even being a part of our public health insurance system). Your family doctor and public health agency (through the schools) are the avenues the vast majority have to vaccination and so being apart from that, the old-order families would need to make a special effort to get vaccinated above and beyond what most people need to do.
By canucker2016 2025-11-1116:371 reply from https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/measles-death-southwes...
for Alberta measles cases, from https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/07/world/canada/measles-albe..."Previously, Moore shared that this outbreak in Ontario was traced back to a Mennonite wedding in New Brunswick, and is spreading primarily in Mennonite and Amish communities where vaccination rates lag. The vast majority of those cases are in southwestern Ontario."
For Texas, https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2025/the-measles-outbreak-in-we..."Most cases this year are in regions where local vaccination rates are as low as 30 percent. Those towns are home to a culturally conservative Mennonite group with ties to Mexico that has historically been less likely to accept vaccines. The group primarily speaks Plautdietsch, a Low German dialect spoken almost entirely by Mennonites."
For some reason many of the mainstream media reports won't reference that the Canadian outbreaks are occurring in mainly Mennonite communities. Perhaps they're trying to avoid singling them out.Most of the cases in Texas are in school-age children between ages 5 and 17 who are either unvaccinated or have unknown vaccination status, and a few are among children who received a single dose of the MMR vaccine. What is known about this outbreak and the community where it’s occurring? This outbreak started in a Mennonite community in West Texas where there are low vaccination rates. Many of the children are homeschooled or attend smaller private schools, and many are unvaccinated. This is not atypical for the larger outbreaks that we’ve seen in the United States in the recent past. In 2019, the U.S. saw 1,274 measles cases, including a large outbreak of slightly more than 900 cases in an Orthodox Jewish community in New York. In 2014, there was a measles outbreak of 383 cases in an Amish community in Ohio.Dense groups of unvaccinated people are just waiting for a biological match to be lit...
By throwaway-blaze 2025-11-1116:55 I think it's more likely they want to leave the impression that this is all caused by "far right" anti-vaxxers and not a religious group with roots that go back hundreds of years.
