South Carolina’s measles outbreak is “accelerating” in the wake of Thanksgiving travel and a lack of vaccinations, an epidemiologist for the state’s Department of Public Health (DPH) warned Wednesday, after authorities traced a sizable outbreak to a church in the state’s northwest.
Of the 111 measles cases recorded in that area, known as the Upstate region, 105 involved people who were unvaccinated while three involved those who were partially vaccinated, state epidemiologist Linda Bell said at a news briefing. At least 254 people had been placed in quarantine as of Tuesday, 16 of whom are in isolation, the DPH said in a news release.
Bell said that 27 new cases had been reported since Friday, bringing the total reported to the DPH this year to 114. “Accelerating is an accurate term. That is a spike in cases we are concerned about,” she said in response to a question from a reporter, adding that South Carolina has “lower than hoped for” vaccination coverage.
At least 16 of those new cases were traced back to a recent outbreak at the Way of Truth Church in Inman, which Bell said has since been “very helpful” in cooperating with the health department’s recommendations.
The worsening situation unfolding in South Carolina shows how the country is still reeling from the resurgence of a preventable, highly contagious disease that has spread beyond a large outbreak in Texas earlier this year and illustrated the consequences of vaccine hesitancy.
Nationally, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recorded at least 1,912 cases of measles — a highly contagious and potentially deadly virus — across 42 states as of Tuesday. More than half of them occurred among children.
In South Carolina, 20 of the Upstate cases involve children under the age of 5, while 75 of the cases were detected in children between the ages of 5 and 17. Across the state, the rate of students with vaccines required by schools dropped from nearly 96 percent in 2020 to 93.5 percent in the 2025 school year, DPH data shows.
The United States declared measles eliminated in 2000, meaning the disease had not spread domestically for more than 12 months. It credited the achievement to widespread immunization campaigns after the vaccine became available in 1963.
In the news conference Wednesday, Bell pointed out that milestone and noted that “high vaccine coverage was responsible for eliminating ongoing transmission in this country.”
“And so now that we are … at the brink of seeing continued transmission in the United States for almost a year now, we’ve run the risk of losing that designation as a country,” Bell said.
“What we’d like people to see is that picture: to consider the effectiveness of the vaccine and having this disease essentially go away,” she said.
The national inoculation rate for the Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR) vaccine has dropped in recent years, particularly since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic and an uptick of vaccine misinformation that at times has propagated on social media and among some public officials, including President Donald Trump and his pick for health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Even a small decline in vaccination can significantly increase the likelihood of an outbreak. Measles can “easily cross borders” into any community where vaccination rates are below 95 percent, according to the CDC.
There is no specific treatment for measles. One or two in every 1,000 children who contract measles are projected to die, the CDC said in 2019, with pneumonia being the most common cause of death after infection.
Bell said that she expects measles transmission in South Carolina to “go on for many more weeks,” adding that this spread could be avoided if more people decide to get vaccinated.
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