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The U.S. has now tallied at least 60 confirmed or suspected measles cases investigated so far this year by authorities in 17 states — more than the 58 cases reported nationwide in all of 2023. It comes as health officials are grappling with multiple major outbreaks of the highly contagious virus around the world. Friday's tally of measles cases is up from 45 counted by the CDC last week. Additional infections have since been announced in Arizona, California, Illinois and Ohio. (Tin, 3/15)

Amid a small but steady rise in infections nationally, Chicago has now reported 12 measles cases, 10 of them linked to people who recently arrived at a local migrant shelter. In a weekly update, the Chicago Department of Public Health said 6 of the cases involve children and 6 are in adults. A local media report said 2 of the patients had attended separate Chicago public schools, 1 of them reportedly a child who is staying at the migrant shelter. (Schnirring, 3/15)

Health officials have confirmed a probable measles exposure in Merced County and are working with exposed individuals and health care providers in the area. Last week, officials said hundreds of people may have been exposed at a Sacramento hospital after an El Dorado County child was confirmed to have contracted it. That child appeared to have contacted it after a trip out of the country. Earlier this week, an unvaccinated Central Valley child was confirmed to have a case of measles. (Downs, 3/15)

U.S. marriages have rebounded to pre-pandemic levels with nearly 2.1 million in 2022. That’s a 4% increase from the year before. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the data Friday, but has not released marriage data for last year. In 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, there were 1.7 million U.S. weddings — the lowest number recorded since 1963. The pandemic threw many marriage plans into disarray, with communities ordering people to stay at home and banning large gatherings to limit the spread of COVID-19. (Stobbe, 3/15)

To many other researchers, creating a map of the 86 billion neurons, or nerve cells, that make up the brain would be considered a nearly insurmountable project. However, researchers at the Allen Institute are pursuing that very task, saying it will lay the foundation for helping to better understand how the brain functions the way it does. The Allen Institute, founded by Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Paul Allen in 2003, was originally created to map gene activity in the mouse brain, but researchers quickly began including studies of the human brain in their work. (Kekatos, 3/16)

Five years ago, in a wheelchair, Julia Hum was admitted to a state mental hospital in Massachusetts. After treatment with targeted deep brain stimulation, she hopes to walk out soon and, for the first time in her adult life, live independently, in her own apartment. (Goodman, 3/15)