Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, on Sunday urged Americans to get vaccinated for measles as outbreaks spread across several US states. “Take the vaccine, please,” Oz told anchor Dana Bash on CNN’s State of the Union. “We have a solution for our problem.” The problem is the rise of measles cases steep enough to jeopardize the country’s measles-elimination status earned in 2000, when the disease was officially declared eradicated in the US. A current outbreak in South Carolina, has surpassed cases last year in Texas, with 920 confirmed cases as of February 3, 2026.
Another sizable outbreak is underway at the Utah-Arizona border, and cases have been confirmed in a number of other states as well. As of Friday, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had confirmed 733 measles cases nationwide this year, nearly all of them associated with current outbreaks.
While vaccination rates overall have been declining for years, Trump administration health officials have been asking questions about their safety. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., began incorporating his vaccine skepticism into public health policy upon being sworn in a year ago. Most recently, he lopped half a dozen diseases off the list of ailments that children should routinely be vaccinated against. Doctors slammed the move, and the American Academy of Pediatrics continues to recommend the original slate. Measles, whooping cough, polio, tetanus, chickenpox, and others are still on the federal government’s revamped list.
“Not all illnesses are equally dangerous, and not all people are equally susceptible to those illnesses,” Oz told Bash. “But measles is one you should get your vaccine.”
He added that the administration has always advocated for vaccines, especially for measles. “Secretary Kennedy has been at the very front of this,” he told Bash, who blanched at the assertion though Oz held firm.
RFK publicly backed the measles vaccine during an outbreak in West Texas last year, but only after one child had died. His initial response had been to call the cases “not unusual.”
In all, two children died of the highly contagious disease during the Texas outbreak, from January through mid-August 2025. In addition to the deaths, the disease put 99 people in the hospital before being reigned in at 752 officially confirmed cases on August 18, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services at the time.
Kennedy attended the second child’s funeral and called the vaccine “the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles” in a social media post.
-by Theresa Braine
With News Wire Services
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