Despite efforts at a nationwide vaccination campaign, measles has now spread to all 31 Mexican states and Mexico City, with 7,131 cases reported over the past year and 24 deaths confirmed.
Over the past 12 months, more than 11.8 million measles vaccines have been administered nationwide, prioritizing girls, boys and susceptible populations.
While the Health Ministry (SSA) points out that only 5% of the total cases are active, specialists from the National Autonomous University of Mexico warn that measles “is the most contagious disease there is, even surpassing Covid-19.”
On Tuesday, the government announced it will reinforce vaccination efforts at high-traffic locations, such as airports and bus terminals, with the aim of preventing infections and detecting possible cases early.
In a statement, the SSA said more than 90% of confirmed cases correspond to people without a history of vaccination, and severe cases and deaths are concentrated mainly in populations with incomplete vaccination schedules, young children, as well as people with malnutrition or weakened immune systems.
The most affected age group is children aged 1 to 4 years (1,089 registered cases), followed by the 5 to 9 year age group (830 cases).
The states where the most cases of measles have been detected are Chihuahua with 4,495 (and 21 of the 24 deaths), followed by Jalisco (1,020 cases and one death), Chiapas (430), Michoacán (261) and Guerrero (248).
At the same time, cases of Febrile Exanthematous Diseases (illnesses causing fever and a widespread skin rash such as measles, rubella, roseola, scarlet fever and chicken pox), 17,267 cases have been registered in the same period.
The SSA said its National Epidemiological Surveillance System is monitoring the epidemiological behavior of measles, allowing for the timely detection of cases, their confirmation by laboratory and the identification of circulating genotypes.
“The increase in measles cases recorded during 2025 occurs in a context of regional resurgence of the disease in the American continent, a phenomenon documented and promptly warned by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and by health authorities of various countries,” the SSA noted.
In November, the PAHO announced that the Region of the Americas lost its verification as free from endemic measles transmission. Canada lost its measles-free status on Nov. 10, 2025, while Mexico and the U.S. have been granted two-month extensions from the PAHO to contain the measles outbreak. Mexico has been summoned to a virtual meeting on April 13 to review whether it will maintain its measles-free status, given the active outbreak.
According to the magazine Scientific American, declining national vaccination rates in the U.S. and Canada have helped entrench measles in those countries, while growing antivaccine messaging by U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, has also contributed to the outbreaks there.
Mexico’s measles outbreak began in February 2025 and health authorities in the state of Chihuahua originally linked it to a late January 2025 outbreak in an undervaccinated community in Gaines County in West Texas.
With reports from El Universal, Proceso, La Jornada and Sin Embargo
