CDC • MMR vaccine is very effective at protecting people against measles, mumps, and rubella, and preventing the complications caused by these diseases.
The measles outbreak in South Carolina is “accelerating” with no end in sight following Thanksgiving and other large gatherings, state health officials said Wednesday.
As of Wednesday, 111 measles cases had been reported in what’s known as upstate South Carolina — an area in the northwest of the state that includes Greenville and Spartanburg.
“We are faced with ongoing transmission that we anticipate will go on for many more weeks,” Dr. Linda Bell, state epidemiologist for the South Carolina Department of Public Health, said during a news briefing Wednesday.
A measles outbreak that began in South Carolina at the start of October is showing no signs of slowing as officials on Tuesday reported 27 new cases since Friday. Those cases bring the outbreak total to 111.
The southern state’s outbreak now rivals outbreaks ongoing in Utah and Arizona, which have tallied 115 and 176 cases, respectively. The outbreaks are threatening to cost the country its measles elimination status, which was earned in 2000 after vaccination efforts stopped the virus from spreading continuously. If the current transmission of the virus isn’t halted by January, the virus will have circulated for 12 consecutive months, marking it once again as an endemic disease in the US.
Health authorities in the United Kingdomconfirmed on December 8, 2025, that they had detected a so-called "recombinant" version of the mpox virus in a male patient.
A virus becomes a recombinant virus when two existing versions of it recombine — by mixing their genetic information — to form a new, hybrid version. This can happen when different types of a virus infect a person at the same time.
The UK's national health security agency, UKHSA, said the recombinant mpox virus was detected in a man who had recently returned to the UK from Asia.