Fillmore County resident tests positive for measles; first case in Minnesota since April
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Public health officials this week confirmed the first case of measles in Minnesota in several months amid a resurgence of the preventable disease across the country.
The Minnesota Department of Health said that an unvaccinated adult in Fillmore County, about 45 minutes southeast of Rochester, is ill with the virus. It’s the 18th case in the state so far this year, and the first since April.
“Anytime that we have a measles case identified, we get concerned about transmission to others because MMR [measles, mumps and rubella] vaccination rates have been dropping since COVID,” said Jayne Griffith, a senior epidemiologist with the Minnesota Department of Health. “It's always a concern when a measles case is identified because the virus will try to seek out unprotected people to infect.”
Griffith said that the Fillmore County case appears to be unrelated to an outbreak in nearby southwest Wisconsin, as the Fillmore resident appears to have contracted the virus while traveling to a number of states across the U.S. But health officials say the Wisconsin outbreak demonstrates how quickly measles can spread from one person to dozens more, especially amongst unvaccinated people.
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In the past month, the number of people infected in Wisconsin has skyrocketed from 15 to 166 measles cases.
“It's thought to be the most contagious virus,” Griffith said. “It has the ability to linger in the air for up to about two hours. And the other difficult thing with measles is that it has a long infectivity period, and people are infectious [for] four days before the rash onset.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 96 percent of the measles cases reported across the country so far this year occurred in people who were unvaccinated or had only had one of the vaccine’s two doses, and nearly 20 percent of the cases were in children under the age of five years old.
Measles cases seem to be spiking across the country in recent years, as the anti-vaccine movement has grown. The CDC has reported 3,471 confirmed cases so far this year, already surpassing last year’s total count of 2,289. It’s the highest number of reported cases of measles in the U.S. since 1991.
In Pennsylvania, at least four people have died from measles in recent weeks, including two unvaccinated adults and two infants who were too young to receive the MMR vaccine.
To ensure people are protected through community immunity, also known as herd immunity, more than 95 percent of people must be vaccinated. According to CDC data, only 87 percent of Minnesota kindergartners had been vaccinated in the 2024-2025 school year.
Griffith stressed the importance of getting the MMR vaccine, explaining that it’s been in use for over 50 years and is extremely safe and effective.
“The best protection is to be vaccinated,” Griffith said. “And that vaccine not only protects [those] who received it, but also other vulnerable people in the community, like young infants or pregnant women who did not get vaccinated before pregnancy, or cancer patients. The more people that are vaccinated, the less likely we are to have outbreaks. It's all really interconnected.”
Griffith and other health providers are combating an increase in misinformation that has been rapidly spreading across the country, partly fueled by false claims from top federal government officials. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, for example, has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that childhood vaccines cause autism. Last year, he personally ordered the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to change its longstanding position that vaccines do not cause autism on the agency’s website.
But the tide could be turning within the federal government amid growing nationwide outbreaks and an increasing number of deaths caused by the disease.
Trump's nominee for Surgeon General, Dr. Nicole Saphier, acknowledged in her Senate confirmation hearing this week that the MMR vaccine is "the best tool we have to combat these infections, to save the most lives and to also create population herd immunity." She also said there's no evidence vaccines cause autism.
The symptoms of measles can include a high fever, cough, runny nose, red and watery eyes, and a rash three to five days after other symptoms begin. The illness can be especially dangerous for babies and young children. Serious cases can lead to pneumonia, meningitis, brain swelling and even death.
“There's just measles popping up in every state and there have been some recent deaths as well, and it's just really sad that this is something that can be prevented,” Griffith said.
