The measles crisis in Mexico has entered a critical phase: in the first 20 days of January, the country registered 1,153 new confirmed cases, meaning that in just three weeks it reached a figure that took almost two months to accumulate throughout 2025. With 7,674 infections, 25 deaths, and the presence of the virus in all 32 states, according to data from the General Directorate of Epidemiology of the Ministry of Health, the situation is worsening week by week. This outbreak has jeopardized Mexico’s certification as a country free of this disease, a recognition granted by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) that is lost when endemic transmission of the virus is re-established uninterruptedly for 12 months or more in the same geographic area, explains a PAHO spokesperson.
“In the case of Mexico, that threshold will be reached on February 1, 2026,” they confirm. However, in April 2026, the Regional Monitoring and Reverification Commission and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) will re-evaluate the criteria of the regional framework and determine whether or not the virus has re-established itself in Mexico.
The first officially reported diagnosis was on February 19, 2025; it was a five-year-old girl from the United States who was in the city of Oaxaca, Oaxaca.
Public health experts maintain that the true number of cases could be higher than what state health departments have confirmed, and that this figure could represent only three out of every ten infections that occurred in Mexico. “Medical literature estimates that for every death there are around a thousand infections,” explains Rodrigo Romero, coordinator of the Mexican Association of Vaccinology. This means that, probably, more than 17,000 cases did not reach a doctor’s office and, therefore, are not included in the official records of the Ministry of Health.
