Canada has lost its measles elimination status for the first time in 27 years

Canada no longer can claim it has eliminated the most infectious virus known to medicine after the Pan American Health Organization announced Monday it has removed the country’s measles elimination status.

The decision comes after a special PAHO committee has confirmed sustained transmission of the same measles virus in Canada for more than one year, the Public Health Agency of Canada said in a news release.

“While transmission has slowed recently, the outbreak has persisted over 12 months, primarily within under-vaccinated communities,” the agency said.

“Canada can re-establish its measles elimination status once transmission of the measles strain associated with the current outbreak is interrupted for at least 12 months,” it added.

The country has been at the centre of a large outbreak that began in October 2024, with a total of 5,138 cases reported as of October 25 — more than twice as many recorded in the past 25 years combined.

Two deaths have been reported, one from Alberta, the other from Ontario, in babies born prematurely after their mothers contracted measles while pregnant. At least 375 people have been hospitalized. Among those infected, 88 per cent were unvaccinated; two per cent had one dose of the two-dose vaccine, five per cent had two or more doses. The vaccine status was unknown for the remaining five per cent.

Canada had held its measles elimination status since 1998, though cases continued to occur sporadically, mostly involving travel to regions where measles is circulating.

From 1998 to 2024, there were an average of 91 measles cases reported in Canada each year, with between zero and 752 cases reported annually.

Earlier this month,  the PAHO, a regional office of the World Health Organization, convened a meeting of its measles and rubella elimination regional monitoring and re-verification commission to review Canada’s status in the wake of the outbreak that began in New Brunswick in October 2024.

Canada is “collaborating with the PAHO and working with federal, provincial, territorial and community partners to implement coordinated actions — focused on improving vaccination coverage, strengthening data sharing, enabling overall surveillance efforts and providing evidence-based guidance,” the public health agency said.

With 2,392 reported cases, Ontario’s outbreak was declared over on Oct. 6.

“Measles is one of the few infections we should have been able to eradicate entirely, so to have it circulating in Canada is an indicator of how strained our public health and tracking systems have been,” McMaster University immunologist Dawn Bowdish said in an email to National Post.

“It should be a national embarrassment to join a list of countries whose public health systems have been torn apart by war or civil unrest, but the more immediate tragedy is that we will see more lost pregnancies, more premature babies and more children who won’t ever grow to their full potential due to the terrible and short and long-term effects of measles.”

Other infectious diseases may once again take a foothold in Canada, Bowdish added.

“The vaccine for measles also includes vaccines for rubella and mumps. Measles is the most contagious so it makes sense that outbreaks for measles started first, but rubella — a major cause of birth defects — and mumps, a cause of infertility, will come next unless we make changes.”

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