Berkshire County — According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a total of 222 measles cases were reported by 12 jurisdictions as of March 6: Alaska, California, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York City, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, and Washington. Those numbers are up from 164 cases reported by the CDC in nine states as of February 27.
Here’s what Berkshire County residents need to know about the outbreak.
What is measles?
“Measles is a highly contagious and deadly virus,” said Board Certified Infectious Disease Physician Claudia Martell MD, MPH, FACP, who heads up an office and The Research Institute in Springfield, Mass. The viral infection is spread through the air as droplets from coughing, sneezing, and breathing and can live in the atmosphere for about two hours, on average, after it is disseminated.
According to Martell, individuals infected with measles are contagious for four days before they show symptoms that include a high fever, cough, runny nose, watery eyes, and a body rash. Complications from the disease can cause pneumonia, encephalitis, and death, with immunocompromised individuals, unvaccinated children, and pregnant women especially susceptible.
How can I protect myself from measles? Do I need a vaccine?
The Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR) vaccine is more than 97 percent effective to protect against the disease, and that protection begins within two weeks following the injection, Martell said of the vaccine that is generally given in two doses. It can also prevent severe illness and transmission of the disease to others, she said. The CDC touts the vaccine as “very safe and effective.”
Measles vaccination usually leads to “long-term immunity,” Martell said, with antibodies developing in 96 percent of individuals who are vaccinated at 12 months old and in 98 percent of individuals vaccinated at 15 months old.
Although some people were vaccinated years ago, that immunity may not currently be active. People who received a “live” measles vaccine in the 1960s do not need to be revaccinated, the CDC states. However, those individuals vaccinated before 1968, or from 1963 to 1967, “with either inactivated (killed) measles vaccine or measles vaccine of unknown type” should be revaccinated with at least one dose of a “live attenuated measles vaccine” since this vaccine was not effective, according to the CDC.
Martell advises individuals who have concerns about their immunity to discuss those issues with their health provider but advocates strongly for immunization. “This is a preventable disease,” she said. “Get vaccinated. Protect yourself. Protect your loved ones. Protect others.”
Vaccination coverage waning
The year 2000 marked the date measles was officially eliminated from the United States, meaning the disease wasn’t spreading within the country and new cases were only found when someone contracted it abroad and returned to the country. In 1962, the year before the MMR vaccine was licensed in 1963, the disease infected about 500,000 individuals.
“Achieving measles elimination status in the United States was a historic public health achievement,” the CDC website states.
When more than 95 percent of people in a community are vaccinated, most people are protected through community immunity, or herd immunity. Within the past few years, however, there have been several clusters or outbreaks of measles in the U.S. that, per Martell, “usually affect people who are not vaccinated.”
Vaccination coverage for U.S. kindergartners decreased from 95.2 percent during the 2019–20 school year to 92.7 percent in the 2023–24 school year, the CDC states. In Massachusetts, 96.3 percent of kindergartners were vaccinated during the 2023–24 school year.
The 2025 measles outbreak
Three outbreaks—with an outbreak defined as three or more related cases—have been reported so far this year, and 93 percent of those reported cases, or 207 out of 222 cases, are associated with outbreaks, the CDC states. In comparison, 285 total measles cases were reported for 2024, the website provides.
Out of those 222 cases reported in 2025, most were ages five to 19 years old (45 percent), with those under five years old making up 34 percent of those cases. About 94 percent of infected cases were unvaccinated or declared their vaccination status was “unknown.”
About 17 percent of those cases, or 38 cases out of 222 total cases, required hospitalization, with the disease confirmed as causing one death of an unvaccinated school-age child in Lubbock, Texas, and another suspected death under investigation in Santa Fe, N.M.
According to a March 5 American Medical Association podcast with Dr. Andrea M. Garcia, the group’s vice president of science, medicine, and public health, “in the short term, we know that cases will continue to rise.”
A March 7 report by The Wall Street Journal states the current outbreak has been spreading through the South Plains region of Texas since late January and tallies 198 cases, with another 30 cases in New Mexico. The article provides that children comprise most of the individuals infected and “the early spread occurred in the Mennonite community in Gaines County, Texas, which has high levels of unvaccinated people.”
Should Berkshire residents be worried?
Martell warned that measles could continue to spread if the disease is not contained.
As of March 4, Tri-Town Board of Health Chair Dr. Charles Kenny confirmed that “no sign of a measles outbreak is present” in the Commonwealth. The group consists of the united boards of health for the towns of Lee, Lenox, and Stockbridge, and its Executive Director James Wilusz stated Tri-Town’s public health nurse program tracks all communicable diseases.
However, Kenny said the group “is very interested in the measles outbreak in Texas because it is an example of what can happen when vaccine levels drop” even though the Commonwealth “historically has high vaccination levels.”
The Tri-Town Health Department follows the CDC and Department of Public Health guidelines supporting vaccination for measles “when evidence of presumptive immunization is lacking,” he said.
“Individual guidance about vaccination is personal, complex, and must come from a dialogue with the individual’s primary [physician],” Kenny said.
