Healthy awareness posters related to the measles outbreak during a public health awareness campaign, at the Taber Health Centre, in the largely Mennonite community of Taber, Alberta, Canada, October 27, 2025. REUTERS/Ahmed Zakot

By David Ljunggren and Julie Steenhuysen

OTTAWA (Reuters) -Canada has lost its measles elimination status after nearly three decades due to its failure to curb a year-long outbreak, the Pan American Health Organization said on Monday, a loss that also results in the Americas region losing the status.

Health experts last month predicted the Pan American Health Organization would strip Canada of the elimination status. The country has recorded more than 5,000 measles cases in nine of its 10 provinces and one northern territory.

"This represents a setback, but it is also reversible," said Dr. Jarbas Barbosa, director of the Pan American Health Organization, part of the World Health Organization.

Although the Americas region as a whole has also lost its elimination status, he said, "it's important to say that all the other 34 countries in the region, they keep their certificate as measles free."

A spokesperson for the province of Alberta, one of the worst-affected Canadian provinces, said cases are down more than 90% from the peak with only two active cases in Alberta for the past several weeks. It said vaccinations since March are 50% higher than a year earlier.

"While transmission has slowed recently, the outbreak has persisted for over 12 months, primarily within under-vaccinated communities," the Public Health Agency of Canada said in a statement.

Health experts have said the spread of the virus, enabled by slipping vaccination rates in parts of the country, is a harbinger of a resurgence of more vaccine-preventable illnesses in a population increasingly skeptical and mistrustful of vaccines since the COVID-19 pandemic.

To be considered measles-free, a country where an outbreak takes place must get back to zero cases within 12 months.

STEP BACKWARD IN TIME

"Loss of elimination status is a step backward and a return to more primitive times, where voices from the Dark Ages continue to attempt pull us," said Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

The Public Health Agency of Canada said it would focus on improving vaccination coverage, strengthening data sharing, and enabling better overall surveillance efforts.

The United States and Mexico have also had significant measles outbreaks this year, with thousands of cases and a handful of deaths.

"What's happening in Canada is happening in a number of high-income countries in the Global North - the United States, the United Kingdom, and parts of Europe," said Ben Kasstan-Dabush, assistant professor of Global Health and Development at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. "Sustained outbreaks because vaccination coverage has declined to a point where it is not able to arrest the spread of disease."

The Americas region only regained its measles-free status in 2024, after an outbreak in Brazil was stopped.

The office of federal Health Minister Marjorie Michel declined to comment.

Manitoba and Ontario, two of the hardest-hit Canadian provinces, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

(Reporting by David Ljunggren in Ottawa, Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago, Jennifer Rigby in London and Sriparna Roy in Bengaluru; Editing by Paul Simao and Bill Berkrot)