Canada has lost its measles elimination status, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) said on Monday, after failing to curb the virus outbreak for 12 straight months.
Because Canada is no longer considered measles-free, the Americas region as a whole has lost its elimination status, although individually other countries are still considered to have eradicated the disease.
However, the United States also risks losing its status if it does not end an ongoing outbreak by January. Similar cases have been reported in Utah, Arizona and South Carolina.
Canada’s outbreak began last October, with health officials attributing it to fewer people being vaccinated against measles.
At a news conference Monday, Paho officials called on Canadian governments and the public to step up vaccinations, emphasizing that 95% of the population must be vaccinated to stop the spread of measles.
“This loss represents a setback, but it is also reversible,” said Dr. Jarbas Barbosa, director of the health organization.
The Public Health Agency of Canada said in its own statement that it was working with Paho and regional health authorities to improve vaccination rates and strengthen data sharing.
Before Monday, Canada had been declared measles-free for three decades. It can return to elimination status if it can curb the spread of the measles strain associated with the current outbreak for at least 12 months.
The country reported more than 5,000 cases of measles in 2025, most of them in the provinces of Ontario and Alberta. That’s three times the 1,681 cases reported in the United States, despite Canada’s much smaller population.
Most of the outbreak occurred in “undervaccinated communities,” Canadian health officials said.
Vaccination rates in Alberta, one of the provinces hard hit by the epidemic, are below the 95% threshold, according to provincial data.
One region, the South Zone, which includes the province’s largest city, Calgary, reported that only 68% of children under the age of two would be vaccinated against measles in 2024.
The MMR vaccine is the most effective way to fight this dangerous virus, which can cause pneumonia, brain swelling and death. The vaccines are 97% effective and also provide immunity against mumps and rubella.
Canadian immunologist Dawn Bowdish told the BBC that there are many reasons for low vaccination rates, including lack of access to general practitioners, the absence of a national vaccination registry that Canadians could use to check their vaccination status and the spread of misinformation.
She also highlighted the lack of public health outreach to communities hesitant or wary of vaccines.
“It shows how many of our systems broke down to get us to this point,” said Professor Bowdish of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
“I hope that this will be a wake-up call to policymakers and that it will be enough of a national embarrassment that we can address some of these systemic problems,” she added.
The Americas is the first and only region in the world to have been declared measles-free since 2016. This status was later briefly lifted after outbreaks in Venezuela and Brazil. Both countries returned to elimination status in 2024, in part due to coordinated vaccination efforts that have vaccinated millions of people.
But measles has since spread again, now in North America.
Along with Canada and the United States, Mexico has also seen a surge in cases and now ranks among the 10 countries with the largest outbreaks, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
