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The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in its latest weekly update today reported 105 more measles cases, pushing the national total to 712, which is more than double the cases reported for all of 2024. Seven outbreaks have been reported across the country, and 93% of the cases reported so far are part of outbreaks. Infections have been reported from 25 jurisdictions, 3 more than last week. Among the sick patients, 97% were unvaccinated or had unknown vaccination status. (Schnirring, 4/11)

The number of measles cases reported in the U.S. in a single week has topped 90 for the first time since a record wave in 2019, according to figures published Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Ninety-one cases of measles were reported with rashes that began the week of March 23, with Arkansas, Hawaii and Indiana joining the list of two dozen states with confirmed measles cases. (Tin, 4/11)

The measles outbreak in West Texas didn’t happen just by chance. The easily preventable disease, declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000, ripped through communities sprawling across more than 20 Texas counties in part because health departments were starved of the funding needed to run vaccine programs, officials say. “We haven’t had a strong immunization program that can really do a lot of boots-on-the-ground work for years,” said Katherine Wells, the health director in Lubbock, a 90-minute drive from the outbreak’s epicenter. (Ungar, Smith and Shastri, 4/13)

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) applauded Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for promoting measles vaccination amid a deadly outbreak in Texas. Since the start of the spread, the U.S. has reported 700 cases of the measles virus in states across the country. The Louisiana lawmaker said immunizations were safe and would be crucial to saving lives during a Sunday interview with radio host John Catsimatidis on WABC 770 AM’s “The Cats Roundtable.” (Fields, 4/13)

During his Senate confirmation hearings to be health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. presented himself as a supporter of vaccines. But in office, he and the agencies he leads have taken far-reaching, sometimes subtle steps to undermine confidence in vaccine efficacy and safety. The National Institutes of Health halted funding for researchers who study vaccine hesitancy and hoped to find ways to overcome it. It also canceled programs intended to discover new vaccines to prevent future pandemics. (Mandavilli, 4/13)

After visiting the families of measles victims in Texas, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stated on X, "The most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine." But his history promoting the anti-vaccination cause alongside questionable alternative medicines has public health officials, parents, and even the MAHA constituency on edge. For the second episode in our Road to MAHA series, NPR's senior science and health editor Maria Godoy and NBC News senior reporter, Brandy Zadrozny, walk us through how anti-vaccine rhetoric has led to this moment in public health. (Luse, Godoy, Williams and Pathak, 4/14)