Despite having 300 million fewer residents, Canada now has nearly three times more measles cases than the United States as the outbreak grows. Like the U.S., the increase in cases is tied to people who have refused the vaccination.
Canada measles outbreak
As of their last report one week ago, Canada’s government said there have been 3,822 cases of measles in that country so far this year. That’s compared to the 1,309 confirmed cases in America in 2025.
Of all those cases in Canada, 86% of them involved unvaccinated people. Dr. Allison McGeer, an infectious diseases physician at Sinai Health and professor at University of Toronto, said much of the outbreak has come in the Mennonite community.
“It’s a range of different cultural and religious groups that have a different view of government than most of the rest of us,” McGeer told Straight Arrow News. “The reason they left Europe to come to North America was an aversion to having government, in their perception, control their lives. As a consequence, their trust in government is low, further eroded by the restrictions that were necessary during the COVID pandemic to keep people alive, and they tend not to get vaccinated.”
McGeer said the outbreak started at a wedding in New Brunswick from a person who had contracted measles outside North America.
The province of Ontario has the highest number of cases in the country so far in 2025.
“Ontario at least is doing much better in the last month,” McGeer said. “I think there are prospects that our outbreak will be over in the next few; it’s probably going to take a couple more months. At the same time, Alberta is now in much more trouble.”
Alberta reported 63 of the 120 new cases across Canada in the last week.
The province recently replaced their chief medical officer of health, Dr. Mark Joffe, who had held the role since 2022.
Joffe’s contract ended in April, and the government said the search for a permanent replacement has begun. Meanwhile, Dr. Sunil Sookram has been named the interim chief.
U.S. measles outbreak
The number of new cases in the U.S. has decreased each of the last three weeks, with only eight new cases reported the week of Sunday, July 6. That’s the lowest number of new cases in one week so far this year.
Health and Human Services Sec. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was recently asked about the outbreak.
“I don’t, at this point, consider it a national emergency,” Kennedy said at a news conference covered by NBC News.
“We’ve done a very, very good job at controlling it,” Kennedy continued, while pointing out the U.S. is doing better than Canada.
However, it’s still the highest number of cases in the U.S. in decades.
Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease doctor and professor at University of California, San Francisco, said the rise here can be traced back to the pandemic as opposed to religious groups.
“These low rates of vaccination have been happening really since the pandemic,” Gandhi told Straight Arrow News. “Over the last three years, we’ve had the most religious exemptions filed, for example, to public schools by parents to exempt their children from vaccines. But these are not specific religious communities. It seems like there’s just a general desire not to vaccinate children.”
Vaccine pushback
What’s clear in both countries is that much of the cause of each outbreak is people being unvaccinated and both countries could lose their eradication status.
The U.S. has seen a decline in overall vaccination rates according to recent data from the CDC.
“The DHHS secretary has been focusing more on vaccine safety as opposed to how incredible vaccine efficacy is,” Dr. Gandhi said. “That kind of shift in tone can make people think that vaccines aren’t safe, whereas actually vaccine-related injuries are very low compared to the benefits of vaccination.”
McGeer said she doesn’t see the same happening in Canada despite the higher number of measles cases.
“[We] don’t have the same high-level attack on science going on in Canada that’s happening in the United States,” McGeer said.
Kennedy has touted the measles vaccine as effective but has a history of anti-vaccination stances.
Both doctors we spoke with believe the measles outbreak could have a positive impact on vaccination rates.
“Measles is one of those really obvious things where you can see what vaccine has done for us and you can understand it,” McGeer said. “So, I think perversely, this measles outbreak is actually restoring people’s faith in vaccines to some degree.”
“When you see someone with measles, when you see your child with measles, or you see [your] neighbors’ children, it’s very uncomfortable,” Gandhi said. “It can make them very sick and so that encourages people to get their children vaccinated.”
