Measles Outbreak Nears Grim Milestone as Hundreds Quarantine in South Carolina

The South Carolina Department of Public Health reported 27 new cases of measles on Tuesday, all identified since last Friday, bringing the total number of identified cases in the state this year to 114. There are currently at least 254 people in quarantine in South Carolina, though the problem isn’t just confined to one state.

The latest figures from the CDC, which haven’t been updated in over a week and don’t include hundreds of recent cases, indicate there have been 1,828 confirmed cases of measles in the U.S. this year as of December 2. Three people have died from measles in 2025, two kids and one adult, the first deaths from the disease in this country since 2015.

The U.S. officially eliminated measles as an endemic disease in the year 2000, thanks to the widespread vaccination programs of the 20th century. But America’s federal public health infrastructure saw a hostile takeover by anti-vaccine activists in January, led by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his so-called Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement.

There have been 46 measles outbreaks identified in the U.S. in 2025, and 87% of confirmed cases have been associated with outbreaks, according to the CDC. An outbreak is defined as three or more cases of the same disease linked to a common source. If the outbreaks continue into January 2026, it will mark a year since they began in West Texas. The U.S. will then officially lose its measles-free status.

The latest confirmed cases in South Carolina

The South Carolina Department of Public Health first identified an outbreak in the state’s Upstate region on October 2, starting with eight cases, mostly concentrated in Spartanburg County. That number has grown to 111 cases in the area, which makes up the vast majority of the 114 cases in the state.

The public exposure sites in South Carolina have included Inman Intermediate School, where 43 students are currently in quarantine. Students at the school, which has kids in 4th-6th grade, first went into quarantine December 4 and will be able to return to class on December 15 if they don’t become ill.

Sixteen of the new cases reported on Tuesday come from Way of Truth Church in Inman, with eight of those cases coming from household exposures to measles. One new case of measles came from “exposure in a health care setting,†according to the South Carolina Department of Public Health, though more details about that case were not released. The agency encourages those who’ve been potentially exposed to measles to notify their health care provider before coming in so that proper arrangements can be made to protect others.

The age breakdown of South Carolina’s known measles cases in 2025 has included: Under 5 years old (20), 5-17 (75), 18+: 10. There have been 6 minors whose ages haven’t been disclosed to public health officials.

Importantly, 105 of the measles cases identified in South Carolina have been from people who were unvaccinated. Three cases have been in people who were partially vaccinated, receiving just one dose of the recommended two-dose MMR shots. Just one person in the state’s outbreak was fully vaccinated.

New cases in Utah and Arizona

The Utah Department of Health and Human Services has identified 115 measles cases this year, with 26 cases identified in the past three weeks, according to the agency’s online dashboard.

A new case was reported Monday at the Bingham Kooper Kids childcare facility, located inside Bingham High School in the city of South Jordan. The person was unvaccinated, according to local news outlet ABC4, and it’s unclear where the person was initially infected and whether they were a child or an adult.

There’s a long list of potential measles exposure locations in Utah, including two elementary schools, a junior high school, a high school, two emergency rooms, a Walmart, and the Treehouse Children’s Museum in Ogden.

Utah’s measles cases have been concentrated in the southwest region of the state, where it shares a border with Arizona, a state that has identified 23 of its own cases in the past two weeks. Arizona has seen 176 measles cases this year, with 97% of cases in unvaccinated patients, according to the Arizona Department of Health Services. Sixty-six percent of cases in Arizona have occurred in people under the age of 18.

RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccine nonsense

The U.S. government has been officially consumed by far-right activists ever since President Donald Trump took power in January. Trump nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, and he quickly worked to radically alter the country’s vaccine policies.

To take just some recent examples, Kennedy has claimed without evidence that peanut allergies are caused by vaccines, and he’s installed anti-vaccine activist Kirk Milhoan as the chair of the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted to remove a recommendation that all children be vaccinated against hepatitis B from birth.

Kennedy is grossly unqualified for the job and quite literally doesn’t believe in germ theory. And as long as he and his MAHA buddies are allowed to continue dismantling the country’s public health infrastructure, we’re going to see more cases of measles, a disease that can induce something called “immune amnesia.â€

What’s immune amnesia? It’s when your immune system forgets how to fight the pathogens it successfully fought off before.