From WisPolitics.com/WisBusiness.com …
— National confirmed measles cases are on track to outpace last year’s number, and the virus is on the rise in Wisconsin amid declining vaccination rates.
The situation is spurring the state’s medical community to warn against misinformation and urge Wisconsinites to get vaccinated to prevent further spread.
Dr. David Letzer, DO, an infectious disease specialist who led the Wisconsin Medical Society’s COVID-19 Task Force, cited a “mistrust” toward vaccines, which he argued “probably plays a big role” in vaccination rates.
“There’s so much information available now through the internet, through different websites, which means there’s also the capability of putting out misinformation,” Letzer said. “So I think part of it is the ease by which misinformation can get out there, the ease by which people can live in their own echo chambers and get reinforced on this information, and also just the mistrust that I think occurred, you know, especially after COVID, related to oversight bodies in terms of health care.”
So far this year, there have been two separate confirmed cases of measles in Wisconsin residents, along with a pair of instances of people traveling back to the state after being exposed to the virus.
At the same time last year, there were no confirmed cases of measles in Wisconsin residents.
Wisconsin Immunization Program Manager Stephanie Schauer in an email statement to WisPolitics said the Department of Health Services is continuing to work to reduce the risk of measles.
She said Wisconsinites should make sure they have received the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and check to see if measles is present in any locations to which they plan to travel. She noted there were 2,280 cases in the country in 2025 and 910 so far in 2026.
“It is important to remind people that measles is highly contagious, how quickly it can be spread from person to person through the air, and that it can stay in the air for two hours after a sick person coughs or sneezes. It is so contagious that if one person gets it, up to 90% of the people around them may also become infected if they are not vaccinated,” Schauer said.
Schauer said measles outbreaks can occur in any community where less than 95% of the population is immune.
In Wisconsin, the statewide vaccination rate for children who had received one or more doses of the MMR vaccine by 2 years old was 81.4% in 2024, the most recent data available. That was down from 88.2% in 2013.
Schauer said declines in vaccination rates are likely related to several factors, including access to routine health care during the COVID-19 pandemic, the rise of mis- and disinformation about vaccines that could lead some to refuse or delay vaccination, and barriers for families to access vaccines.
Rep. Renuka Mayadev, who serves on the Assembly Health, Aging and Long-Term Care Committee, also pointed to increased access to information online. The Madison Dem is a former maternal and child health program advisor at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health.
“We’ve seen this growing campaign of antivaccination beliefs spreading and we all know these phones, the internet, social media, props up mistruths in ways that we didn’t have before,” Mayadev said. “And I think you could definitely at least correlate some of those drops in vaccination to the way that people are getting their information.”
The Trump administration’s CDC still recommends children receive the MMR, although it rolled back recommendations for several other childhood vaccines last month, prompting backlash from the medical community.
Following the CDC action, Mayadev introduced a bill that would require health insurance policies and self-insured government plans to continue covering vaccines for which the federal government withdraws a recommendation if the vaccine is still recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics or American Academy of Family Physicians.
She said guidance from the federal government is no longer reliable. In Wisconsin, DHS continues to recommend the American Academy of Pediatrics’ vaccine schedule for health care providers.
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