Minnesota adds two cases to measles surge amid decline in routine vaccinations

The number of Minnesota parents claiming non-medical exemptions to routine vaccinations has more than doubled in recent years, likely fueling the recent emergence of new measles cases, including two last week.

Minnesota has reported 20 measles cases this year, with all recent cases in unvaccinated people.

Measles is a highly contagious illness that, before the 1960s, nearly all children contracted and from which tens of thousands were hospitalized every year. Thanks to decades of widespread vaccination, it was declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000, though the number of measles cases in 2025 — the highest in three decades — is now threatening that status.

That’s partly because more families are getting their kids out of routine vaccinations, including for measles.

“What’s happening in Minnesota is happening across the country,” said Department of Health  Commissioner Brooke Cunningham after Gov. Tim Walz got vaccinated for the flu and COVID on Wednesday. “Unfortunately, trends have gone down over the last five years. But we want to see them come back up.”

Nationwide, 3.6% of kindergartners are exempt from one or more vaccines, compared to 2.2% a decade ago. In Minnesota, nearly 6% of kindergartners are receiving vaccine exemptions, reflecting growing vaccine skepticism that has found a champion in the highest reaches of the nation’s health infrastructure. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., known for his vaccine skepticism, has encouraged the measles vaccine but stops short of supporting a mandate for it.

“The most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine,” Kennedy Jr. wrote on X in April, following a visit to families of children who died in the Texas measles outbreak. He’s also previously said that he’d “probably” vaccinate his own child for measles.

In 2024, 86% of Minnesotan kindergartners got two doses of the MMR vaccine, which includes the measles vaccine — far below the 95% of vaccine coverage threshold below which the highly contagious disease can easily spread in communities.