Measles cases in the United States have surpassed 4,000 this year, according to data updated Friday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
A total of 4,080 cases have been confirmed, with most reported by 45 states and Washington, D.C. Eighteen of this year’s total have been among international visitors to the U.S., according to the CDC.
Five measles-associated deaths have been confirmed so far in 2026, all of them in Pennsylvania, according to health officials in the state.
The CDC has only recognized two deaths so far this year, with the agency saying that “number is subject to change.”
The majority of measles cases in 2026 have been confirmed among children and teenagers aged 19 and younger, according to the CDC. About one in 10 children under age 5 have been hospitalized, CDC data shows.
Signs point the way to measles testing in the parking lot of the Seminole Hospital District across from Wigwam Stadium on February 27, 2025 in Seminole, Texas.
Jan Sonnenmair/Getty Images
About 95% of cases are among people who are unvaccinated or whose vaccination status is unknown, according to agency data.
Meanwhile, 2% of cases are among those who have received just one dose of the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine and 2% of cases are among those who received the recommended two doses, according to the CDC.
“It’s very telling,” Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious diseases specialist and associate dean for regional campuses at the University of California, San Francisco, told ABC News of the breakdown in cases by vaccination status. “It’s not a surprise, but it’s chilling in many ways.”
According to Chin-Hong, the official total of confirmed cases likely does not reflect the full picture of measles in the U.S. He said it’s probable that there are many families with measles cases who never got tested.
“The story’s not been fully told yet,” he said. “In other words, the official numbers are only part of the picture and the reason why I think so is because the number of deaths and hospitalizations suggests that there are many more people who are infected but unaccounted.”
The CDC currently recommends that people receive two doses of the MMR vaccine, the first at ages 12 to 15 months and the second between 4 and 6 years old. One dose is 93% effective, and two doses are 97% effective against measles, the CDC says.
However, CDC data shows vaccination rates have been lagging in recent years. During the 2025-26 school year, 92.4% of kindergartners received the MMR vaccine, according to data. This is lower than the 95.2% seen in the 2019-20 school year, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Unlike many of the healthcare issues or diseases that affect so much of the population … we have the tool,” John Brownstein, an epidemiologist and chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor, said. “It’s a vaccine that is incredibly effective and the goal is to close vaccination gaps.”
He noted that authorities have a responsibility to offer straightforward advice to the public.
“We need federal leadership that is really clear on the need for vaccination. We need local communities that are providing clear guidance and education and support to make decisions,” Brownstein said. “I think we need to have a very aligned view on … the impact of measles when communities are under-vaccinated.”
Instructions for a Measles vaccination is seen outside of the Lubbock Public Health facility on April 09, 2025 in Lubbock, Texas.
The specialists said there are several reasons for the U.S. breaking measles case records for the second year in a row, including declining vaccination rates, people not fearing the measles virus, a loss of trust in public health institutions and a perceived lack of clear guidance and communication from the nation’s top public health officials.
“I think there’s a very strong chance that we would lose our elimination status because we’re seeing the signs that measles is becoming continuously established here in the U.S.” Brownstein said. “For a country with resources and an ability to provide protection, it’s really unfortunate that we’re seeing these tides turn on this very preventable disease.”
A top official with the UN’s health agency doesn’t know how a lab worker in Siberia died amid concerns about plague, and she’s urging Russia to provide more information.
There have been questions and concerns about the death of the 28-year-old woman, identified in Russian media as Darya Shipilova, amid speculation she died of pneumonic plague and that her death may be connected pathogens she worked with at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East.
Maria Van Kerkhove, director of epidemic and pandemic management at the World Health Agency (WHO), said the agency doesn’t know the cause of the woman’s Oct. 2 death, and “this is why we need more information.”
“We don’t understand how she was infected,” Van Kerkhove said during a news briefing in Geneva.
The WHO is also seeking more information about unconfirmed media reports of a second case of pneumonia of “undetermined cause” connected to the Irkutsk lab, in southeastern Siberia.
The Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East, where a lab technician worked before her death on Oct. 2 from pneumonia. The World Health Organization is urging Russia to be more forthcoming with information about the case, as authorities insist her illness was not related to a form of plague. (Tatyana Makeyeva/AFP/Getty Images)
WHO director general Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the agency could not verify the credibility of the reports but is seeking clarification from the relevant officials in Russia.
In a tersely worded statement, Russia’s official public health and consumer watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, does not link the first case to pneumonic plague, saying only that “extensive” testing found no evidence the lab worker’s illness was caused by any of the pathogens she worked with.
Russia has said she died of pneumonia — a “typical” acute respiratory viral infection — and its health authorities have found no cases of plague recently, the WHO has said, acknowledging that pneumonia is commonplace and that cases of COVID-19 and rhinovirus were present among the some 200 people monitored since that death.
Pneumonic plague is a less common but severe form of plague that can spread from person to person.
Plague is an infectious disease caused by a bacterium known as Yersinia pestis, or Y. pestis, that is carried by small mammals and generally spread by the fleas that feed off them. It can be treated with antibiotics but can be deadly if left untreated.
What we know about the suspected plague death in Russia
Two-hundred people have been placed under medical observation in Siberia, Russia, after a laboratory worker died after a reported accident at a plague research facility. The World Health Organization says the public health risk remains low.
Russia insists no plague cases
Moscow previously informed the WHO that no case of plague has been registered in the Irkutsk region.
Russian health authorities reported a full range of preventive measures had been carried out —including tracing the dead woman’s contacts, medical monitoring and lab tests, the WHO said.
The Russian note relayed to The Associated Press by the WHO said the test showed “no presence of dangerous infectious disease pathogens in any of the contacts.”
The organization said it has requested further information to clarify the cause of the severe pneumonia, the pathogen that prompted the public health measures, and media reports of the second case.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov referred all questions to Rospotrebnadzor, which does not mention suspected plague in its reports.
In its latest statement Tuesday, the agency said “the sanitary and epidemiological situation in the Irkutsk region … is calm.”
Authorities were completing a “complex of prophylactic measures and medical observation over contacts,” it said, adding that so far they have found two cases of COVID-19 and two of rhinovirus.
Mother not notified
The news outlet Lyudi Baikala identified Shipilova as the deceased lab worker and said she first was hospitalized with cold symptoms Sept. 29, in the nearby town of Shelekhov, and died three days later.
It quoted colleagues as saying she was a highly qualified and diligent researcher, and emphasized that security rules at the facility are extremely strict.
The report quoted Shipilova’s neighbours as saying a team of disinfection experts did several cleanups of her apartment, leaving a strong antiseptic smell.
Researchers work in the institute’s lab in this undated photo released in 2019. (Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and Far East/Handout/The Associated Press)
Shipilova’s mother, who worked as a doctor in the past, described her daughter as hard-working and dedicated, according to independent Russian news outlet Glubina, adding that she had not received official documents describing the cause of death.
Irkutsk Gov. Igor Kobzev said she died of a “particularly dangerous infection” and everyone who came into contact with her has remained under medical supervision.
The hospital where she died was placed under quarantine, no longer admitting or discharging patients, although its outpatient clinic has continued operating, according to Mayor Maxim Modin.
WHO urges transparency
Russian authorities have, however kept a tight lid on information and the speculation she died of pneumonic plague.
While the case has grabbed international attention, Russian state TV and other national state-controlled media have steered clear of the subject. Some state-sponsored news outlets withdrew earlier reports about the case.
Vasily Vlassov, professor at the department of health-care administration and economics at Russia’s Higher School of Economics, says it’s not clear whether more transparency was possible if those dealing with the situation didn’t have enough certainty, and “maybe, they still don’t.”
Deceiving the public “always turns out to be harmful,” he said, and distrust of Russia’s official narrative is “natural” and “almost inevitable.”
Judy Twigg, professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University, notes that Russia criminalized “false information” about threats to public safety in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, “so silence is the one safe move for everyone below the top.”
“Personalist regimes without electoral accountability tend to treat bad news as a loyalty problem rather than focusing on the actual problem to be addressed,” she said.
LISTEN | Ground zero for ‘Black Death’:
Quirks and Quarks8:08The Black Death was history’s most lethal plague. Now we know where it started
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Russia’s health regulator said Thursday that reports that a second person had fallen ill following the death of a worker at a plague research laboratory in Siberia were false.
In a statement published by Russian news agencies, the regulator denied what it called “fake information circulating on social media regarding a second case of illness.”
It said it had completed checks on all the contacts of the dead woman, adding, “No health issues related to an infectious disease were detected, and the results of nearly 5,000 laboratory tests showed no dangerous pathogenic microorganisms.”
Russian authorities have said 28-year-old Daria Shipilova died last Friday from pneumonia of an as-yet-unestablished origin. Shipilova was a lab employee at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East, located in the town of Shelekhov, prompting authorities in Russia to swiftly roll out a series of precautionary anti-epidemic measures that caught global attention.
What questions do you have about the reports of pneumonicplague in Russia? Email ask@cbc.ca.
Rospotrebnadzor, Russia’s health watchdog, said she died of an unknown type of pneumonia and that no relevant pathogens had been found in anyone who came into contact with her. Officials in Russia said she was vaccinated and therefore “immune to the dangerous infections with which she worked.”
A security person wearing a face mask looks out from the door of an infectious diseases hospital in the town of Shelekhov, where an employee of the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute recently died, a mysterious fatality that has caused international concern. (Tatyana Makeyeva/AFP/Getty Images)
The World Health Organization initially said it estimated the risk of the Russia case to the public as low, based on what had been made known, but told a news conference on Wednesday it could not make a fuller risk assessment due to insufficient information from the Russian authorities.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of WHO, said the global health body had offered assistance to Russia and also repeated a request to verify “media reports of a second employee with pneumonia of undetermined cause.” Those reports started with a Russian media outlet and were spread to English-language audiences by the Daily Mail in Britain, based on a subsequent pneumonia-like death at an Irkutsk hospital.
Health Canada has told CBC News it is also monitoring the situation, though it sees no risk to Canada at this time. According to the agency, the last recorded human case of plague in this country was in 1939.
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Erica Schwartz said Wednesday the risk to the U.S. from an unconfirmed pneumonic plague case in Siberia was extremely low, but the agency was prepared to monitor and screen travellers.
What we know about the suspected plague death in Russia
Two-hundred people have been placed under medical observation in Siberia, Russia, after a laboratory worker died after a reported accident at a plague research facility. The World Health Organization says the public health risk remains low.
The CDC has a port health station at the John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York that can conduct surveillance and screening for travellers from the region entering the United States, Schwartz said. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether the agency planned to set up screening there.
A spokesperson from Health and Human Services said there are about 200 individuals per year from the Siberian region who travel to the United States. Direct flights between Russia and the United States have been suspended since the start of the Ukraine war in 2022.
Bonnie couldn’t walk without a cane, and blamed “the jab.”
Art couldn’t help but recall his dad’s Second World War persecution.
The COVID-19 pandemic had myriad social, economic and political effects around the world. But Alberta may be the only place it helped spawn a separatist movement.
For many independence activists, from leaders to adherents, their entrée to activism was in their profound responses to public health restrictions or vaccines.
Proverbially, it was the same radioactive spider bite that powered so many ordinary Albertans into becoming fighters for a cause.
Sure, there’s a long history of separatism that stretches back to Alberta’s founding in 1905, got inflamed anew by Ottawa energy policy of the 1980s, and then again by climate action more recently.
The timeline of western alienation may be long, but for so many Alberta separatists their trajectories really began in 2020 and 2021.
Polling ahead of the Oct. 19 referendum suggests the separatist cohort is a minority of residents now, just as the COVID policy critics and the vaccine-wary were in the minority then.
But they’re just as riled up and disgusted by the mainstream Canadian status quo as they were five or six years ago, converting their personal disgust into political action.
“Most people are like that,” reasons Chris Scott, leader of the sovereignist group Let’s Talk Alberta. “They ignore things around them until it affects them personally, until they have a reason to get involved.”
Scott’s COVID origin story might be the best known. He defied indoor dining restrictions at his Whistle Stop Café in Mirror, Alta., then ignored a 2021 closure order, then got arrested after leading a protest outside his restaurant. Then, he fought a lengthy and successful court case against his charges.
Chris Scott was arrested in May 2021 after leading this protest outside his café in Mirror, Alta., which health authorities had targeted over violating pandemic public health measures. (Jason Franson/The Canadian Press)
Before all that, Scott said his only political activity was casually talking smack online against progressives. But he was jolted into doing more after the public health rules he didn’t believe in. “It kind of shattered my illusion of what I thought a free Canada was,” he told CBC News in a recent interview.
Images from the 2021 protest show glimpses of the separatist leader Scott would become. A blue Alberta flag flapped on the pole outside his restaurant, where a maple leaf might typically fly. Around the protest hung banners saying “Alberta strong and free.”
Before long, he became a key figure in Alberta Prosperity Project, the group behind the 300,000-signature petition that helped push Premier Danielle Smith to schedule this month’s referendum on holding a binding separatism vote in the future.
Here is Scott’s logical bridge from his restaurant having to close to wanting an independent Alberta: “If Alberta was fully sovereign, and the federal government wasn’t interfering, we could make sure that we have the rights and freedom that we thought we had before.”
It was, however, the provincial policies of then-premier Jason Kenney that forced restrictions on the Whistle Stop, albeit based on federal public health recommendations. Among APP’s founders is Dennis Modry, the retired Edmonton surgeon who’d emerged in the COVID skeptic community with a prominent and contentious open letter in 2020 to Jason Kenney.
Chris Scott live-streams from the Let’s Talk Alberta tour through small towns east of Calgary. (Mantai Chow/CBC)
Scott took his Let’s Talk Alberta RV tour in mid-September to a banquet hall in northeast Calgary, where Bonnie Meikle worked the registration and pro-independence pamphlet desk, as she often does.
She used to work in foodservice at a Ponoka medical centre, and Alberta Health Service’s COVID mandate forced her to get a vaccine she didn’t trust, or lose her job.
Meikle got what she derisively calls “the jab,” and lost her job anyway — because she says she soon lost much of the cartilage in her knees.
She attributes that, and co-workers dying, to vaccines.
“Of course, you can’t necessarily prove anything, but I was seeing these things happen around me,” Meikle said.
She supported 2022’s COVID-related convoy protests in Ottawa and Coutts, Alta., but said the law-enforcement response to it “broke” her.
“I learned that the Canada I lived in wasn’t the country that I thought it was,” she said.
Separatist messages are tougher sells in big cities. Organizers at Scott’s Calgary event on a Tuesday night last month put out banquet chairs for 200 people, but around 50 showed up. By show of hands more people told Scott they’d been to a dozen or more independence events than were there for the first time.
Nick Klinck, a heavy equipment operator, was impressed enough that when Scott sent donation buckets around, he pulled a $100 bill out of his wallet. He sported a Trump-style “Make Alberta Great Again” blue hat, and explained he likes the conversations it provokes.
He also perked up politically during the pandemic lockdowns and vaccine mandates. He watched friends lose their jobs and have vehicles repossessed, while rodeo shutdowns meant he lost most of two competitive bull-riding seasons.
“I don’t like the way Canada is going — not proud of the direction,” he said.
Nick Klinck at a pro-indendence event in northeast Calgary in September. (Jason Markusoff/CBC)
Pandemic protesters are a blend of two groups — the anti-vaccine people and the anti-government populists “that were mostly on the far right,” according to Jean-Christophe Boucher, a University of Calgary political scientist who has tracked post-pandemic activism.
“COVID created conditions to create a political movement without parties necessarily being the main drivers,” he said.
What coalesced to protest the vaccine mandates galvanized during the 2022 trucker convoy, and has also had overlap with protests against gender-identity policies in schools and furore over an ostrich cull in B.C. last year.
In Alberta, activism has largely migrated to trying to take the province out of Canada, Boucher said.
“This is kind of a movement that has been working with each other for almost more than six years now and has kind of like systematically developed their networks, built their funding bases, built their online followership.”
But as they were with public health rules, separatists are fighting against a near-consensus among the institutional establishment, and almost every politician you can name. Online and in person, they try to persuade more Albertans to see it their way.
‘Anyone here vaccinated?’
About an hour’s drive south of Calgary, small-town separatist organizers for APP gather in a former car-repair shop in the town of Vulcan.
In a 90-minute group interview with CBC News, the pandemic repeatedly comes into the conversation. Many distrust the scientific consensus that vaccines were safe and effective, and reckon COVID was a scam or a “psy-op.”
“Is anyone here vaccinated?” asks Leanne Sparks from the nearby village of Champion. Others in the room shake their heads, or grimace knowingly. For people who did get COVID shots, “it has changed their attitudes,” said Cindy Leader from Vulcan, explaining the hostility independence activists have faced locally.
Organizers with Alberta Prosperity Project meet in the town of Vulcan, Alta. (Jason Markusoff/CBC)
APP leader Mitch Sylvestre views federalists as the sort that complied without protest to social distancing rules and mask recommendations. “They obviously don’t view COVID the way I see it.”
Sylvestre is the separatist petition’s frontman and a major UCP power broker, but admits he was politically clueless until the pandemic.
“I did not know left from right,” he said.
In spring 2020, provincial health authorities shuttered Sylvestre’s gun and sporting goods store in Bonnyville, along with other “non-essential businesses.” It infuriated him that Canadian Tire and Walmart in his northeast Alberta town were deemed essential, allowing them to keep flogging similar items that he was barred from selling.
“COVID was the clear example of how bad it could get,” he told CBC News.
Before plotting a split from Canada, he and others worked on making Kenney part ways from power in Alberta. Sylvestre joined Take Back Alberta, the grassroots organization launched by David Parker — a preacher’s son offended at pandemic crackdowns on pastors, and doubtful of vaccines.
Take Back tapped into unrest about COVID rules, particularly in rural areas and conservative online communities, and Parker called Kenney a “tyrant.”
With a flood of new members voting in a leadership review, United Conservatives pushed out the party’s first premier, and replaced him with a politician and ex-broadcaster who compared vaccine requirements to post-Holocaust conventions on human experimentation, and gave special airtime to what she called the pandemic’s “deplatformed doctors” (including Modry).
As premier, Danielle Smith further pleased her new political base — she fired top public health official Deena Hinshaw, and called the unvaccinated “the most discriminated against group that I’ve ever witnessed in my lifetime.”
A fellow traveller on pandemic issues, she’s met activists partway on their new issue of focus. She’s a declared federalist, but she’s touted her own version of “Alberta sovereignty within a united Canada,” and loosened citizen initiative rules to make it easier for separatists to get the issue onto a provincial ballot.
Then-premier Jason Kenney takes his mask off at a news conference about COVID restrictions in 2021. (Todd Korol/The Canadian Press)
Kenney has been far more vocal than his successor against separatists, which he told CBC Radio’s The House in August is a “marginal movement” like the one that rose up against him.
“I think it got hypercharged by people with a variety of grievances coming together and getting organized around COVID,” Kenney said.
“This whole thing has become the new right wing uni-cause. If your number-one issue is vaccine skepticism or chemtrails or … or globalism — whatever it is, separatism is a convenient umbrella for these preoccupations.”
While most Alberta separatists appear to have latched onto the issue since the pandemic — largely since the federal Liberals won re-election last year, and the citizen’s petition gave the cause a political vehicle — some in the movement have held the view for longer.
Cory Morgan’s separatism activity goes back to his 2001 leadership of the Alberta Independence Party, long before anyone outside microbiology circles knew what a coronavirus was.
But the leader of the third-party advertiser Pathway to Independence gets how COVID strikes an effective nerve in a pro-independence crowd.
“We’re one more sneeze away from being locked down over some fake pandemic,” Morgan told the July 1 “Albertans’ Day” rally outside Chris Scott’s restaurant in Mirror.
“You know, we can make the case about equalization and our oilfield and things like that, but the scariest stuff of all is our freedoms … people often don’t realize that they don’t have them until they’ve lost them.”
Several years removed from mask and vaccine rules, the issues don’t come up constantly at separatist lectures. But it’s front-of-mind enough that one speaker at APP’s big legislature rally in August focused his speech on an Ontario Conservative MP Dean Allison’s independent hearings on vaccine injuries. (About 11,702 serious adverse events were reported among the 105 million COVID immunization doses administered through 2023, according to Health Canada.)
Jason Lavigne, a popular pro-independence online broadcaster, took a week off in the referendum campaign’s stretch drive to be in Ottawa, to live-stream what Conservatives called the Allison Inquiry, eight hours a day for four days.
The pandemic also brought into the separatist movement some activists who may have never otherwise been accessible to what some analysts consider a hard-right cause.
Art’s journey
Art Matsui is one such figure.
The retired IT worker celebrated with his wife at the NDP’s Calgary headquarters the night Rachel Notley was elected premier in 2015; he joined Naheed Nenshi’s mayoral election victory party in 2010, donning a fuzzy fedora in Nenshi’s signature purple. “Lefties” through and through, he said in an interview.
Art Matsui, right, embraces Naheed Nenshi at his 2010 victory party for the Calgary mayoralty, in the candidate’s trademark purple. (Facebook/Art Matsui)
When the pandemic shuttered businesses and ushered in universal masking, Matsui was immediately skeptical of the science behind such decisions. They’d been similarly doubtful of the public health benefits of adding fluoride to the public water supply, but the health interventions in COVID-19 were so much broader.
His wife was raised in a quasi-religious cult and had broken free, but preserved her distrust of governments. For Matsui, inspiration to resist came from his father’s imprisonment in Canada’s Japanese internment camps in the 1940s.
“Rights is the main driving force in my journey,” he said. “Because we had been stripped of all our rights during the Second World War … my family lost everything.”
He became a regular at Calgary’s pandemic protests and marches. He began bringing his father’s internment camp papers to show what happens in extreme rights crackdowns.
Matsui got turned off by Nenshi when the mayor called them “thinly veiled white nationalist supremacist anti-government protests.” He recalled swearing off Notley in late 2021 when she suggested a door-to-door campaign to address the few vaccine-hesitant Albertans. He backed the trucker convoy, and even attempted to drive along with them to Medicine Hat, until his vehicle got rear-ended leaving Calgary.
At one protest, Matsui met Take Back Alberta’s Parker, who encouraged him to try effecting change in the UCP. He became a party director in his home riding, and quickly supported Smith for premier, revering her public apology for the Alberta government’s treatment of the unvaccinated.
As he became more involved with Take Back Alberta and then Alberta Prosperity Project, Matsui became more convinced the federal government continued to crack down on rights post-pandemic, regarding the Liberals’ anti-hate legislation as a big threat to free speech
“In COVID, they were curtailing our freedoms, right?” Matsui said. “But now, we’re still on the same trajectory.”
Matsui gradually began to believe that moving toward Alberta independence was the only way to preserve freedoms, as so many fellow travellers have. He gathered names on the separatist petition, and became a frequent attendee and volunteer at pro-independence events.
Art Matsui, centre, met conservative broadcaster Tucker Carlson and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (now Health and Human Services Secretary in the Trump administration) at an event in Milwaukee in 2024. (Facebook/Art Matsui)
It’s all coming to a head on Oct. 19, the mission many independence activists have passionately been on for about 18 months, some longer.
Polls suggest they’re bound to lose the referendum by a wide margin. If they lose, and there’s no binding referendum campaign to wage, where will they take their anti-establishment, anti-government fight then?
Feodor Snagovsky, a University of Alberta political scientist, has found in polling that one of the clearest predictors of separatism was support for the convoy. He wonders what cause the group might latch onto next.
“After Oct. 19, whether or not they continue with separatism I think is an open question,” Snagovsky said.
“I don’t think separatist sentiment necessarily will go down, but the folks in this cohort will find other things to be interested in.”
After spending years on freedoms during the pandemic, and then separatism, the “need to create a political campaign” might spawn something different, said University of Calgary’s Boucher.
Losing the referendum won’t likely change how they view Alberta’s place in Canada, he said.
But he expects them to carry the separatist beliefs and narrative with them in whatever might come next for the cohort.
“Losing now won’t change how they will feel about this issue.”
Anti-lockdown and anti-mask protesters at a rally outside the Alberta Legislature in Edmonton in 2021. (Jason Franson/The Canadian Press)
Most independence leaders, for their part, have vowed to keep up the fight, no matter what the referendum’s result is.
Several years removed from state-ordered business closures, or needing proof of a vaccine to fly, work in health care or dine indoors, policy-makers and much of the public may have moved on.
Many Alberta separatists haven’t, and don’t believe Big Government has, either.
To Mitch Sylvestre, COVID was a mere “dress rehearsal” for what those in power will impose next, if Alberta cannot free itself from overreach.
“The next one,” he said, “will be even more strict.”
Pennsylvania is reporting 74 new measles cases since Monday, the state’s health department said Wednesday.
A total of 1,078 cases have been reported in the state so far this year. At least 207 people have been hospitalized and five people have died, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Health (DOH).
“Of the 74 cases added, more than 40 represent individuals who were sick more than two weeks ago and are no longer contagious, but their cases were only recently reported and subsequently confirmed, the DOH said. Wednesday’s update “does not reflect a current surge in new infections.”
Of the five people who died, two of the deaths were among unvaccinated adults: an 18-year-old and a 40-year-old. The other two deaths were among infants who were too young to have received the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine.
The fifth death occurred in an unvaccinated resident of Lancaster County, in southeastern Pennsylvania, but it is unclear how old the individual is. Lancaster County is the epicenter of the state’s outbreak, with 401 cases confirmed so far.
One-third of cases are among those under 18 years old and fewer than 1% of cases are among those fully vaccinated with the MMR shot, according to DOH data.
In this Oct. 24, 2025, file photo, a vial of the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR) vaccination for children is displayed during an immunization event in Los Angeles.
Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images, FILE
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that people receive two doses of the MMR vaccine, the first at ages 12 to 15 months and the second between 4 and 6 years old. One dose is 93% effective in preventing measles infection and two doses are 97% effective, the CDC says.
Infants aged 6 to 11 months living in or traveling to high-risk outbreak areas may receive an early third dose of the MMR vaccine.
CDC data, however shows vaccination rates have been lagging in recent years. During the 2025-26 school year, 92.4% of kindergartners received the MMR vaccine, according to data. This is lower than the 95.2% seen in the 2019-20 school year, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“State health center staff have administered more than 5,700 MMR vaccinations at 198 pop-up vaccination clinics in the affected communities since the outbreak began in late April,” DOH wrote in a press release on Wednesday.
“Dozens of additional vaccine clinics are scheduled for the upcoming weeks and months, based on community interest and need,” the press release continued. “In pop-up clinics and at state health centers combined, Department nurses have administered nearly 9,000 MMR vaccine doses to residents across the Commonwealth in 2026.”
The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.
The federal government will introduce legislation this fall that will indefinitely extend the ban on access to a medically assisted death for people who are solely suffering from mental illness, Justice Minister Sean Fraser said on Wednesday.
“Canada has made a decision not to move forward with the expansion that is scheduled in the Criminal Code of medical assistance in dying in circumstances where mental illness is the sole basis,” he said in the foyer of the House of Commons.
Fraser said the government’s decision reflects the position expressed by a special parliamentary committee report released in June along with his own department’s probing of the issue.
“While there is not a perfect consensus on this issue, we believe this is the correct approach at this particular time,” he said.
WATCH | Justice minister on forthcoming MAID changes:
Ottawa ‘landed in the right place’ with changes to MAID: justice minister
Minister of Justice Sean Fraser says his perspective on the new legislation on medical assistance in dying (MAID) that will be tabled this fall comes from the experiences and conversations he’s had with people he knows. ‘These are not easy conversations, but my experience is not unique,’ he says, adding that he understands the reticence some people may have about the legislation.
Fraser said the promised legislation will also “open the door” for people to give advance consent for their own medically assisted death in circumstances where the illness they are suffering from will eventually eliminate their capacity to make that decision.
The minister explained that while the details of advance consent will be worked out in House of Commons committees, it will require a person’s illness to be incurable and result in intolerable suffering.
2 key reasons for MAID exclusion
Fraser said there are two significant points motivating his government to indefinitely extend the current prohibition on receiving MAID for people who only have a mental illness.
He said there are “very real concerns about people who live in communities with inadequate access to mental health services.”
The second reason was the lack of consensus over when a mental illness is incurable, along with other issues raised in the June report.
WATCH | Review urges indefinite exclusion for mental illness:
MAID should ‘indefinitely exclude’ people with mental illness, review urges
A newly tabled parliamentary report urges the Canadian government to amend the criminal code to indefinitely exclude people whose sole underlying condition is mental illness from Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID). The decision now lies with Justice Minister Sean Fraser.
The government passed MAID legislation in 2016. But the Superior Court of Quebec struck the law down in 2019 because it was limited to those whose deaths were “reasonably foreseeable.”
Bill C-7, which passed Parliament in March 2021, removed that requirement, in line with the court’s ruling. The legislation also temporarily pushed back the expansion of MAID to cases involving only mental illness to March 2023.
That was further delayed to 2024 and again to March 2027.
Fraser says Conservative bill isn’t enough
Fraser said that he was announcing the legislation before it was ready, in part, to explain why his government will not be voting for a Conservative private member’s bill, C-218, which is up for a vote in the House later in the day.
Fraser thanked Conservative MP Tamara Jansen for introducing the bill but said it fell short in two areas. The first area was the bill’s use of the term “mental disorders,” which the minister said could be interpreted to include neurologically degenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s.
Under existing MAID legislation, people with neurologically degenerative diseases can recieve a medically assisted death.
He also pointed to the fact that C-218 does not address advance consent.
“This second issue is extremely important to communities of people who’ve been diagnosed with very, very serious illnesses [that] may cause them to lose capacity subsequently,” he said.
Accusations of political games
After Fraser’s announcement, Jansen accused the minister of playing games “hours before” the House of Commons was set to vote on her bill.
“We have no idea what his bill’s going to say. He’s telling us all sorts of things, he hasn’t even seen the bill himself,” she said. “I find it incredibly negligent. He had the entire summer to put this together.”
Jansen asked Liberal MPs to consider voting for her bill regardless, “because people’s lives are at risk, very vulnerable Canadians,” and said Fraser was attempting to sink C-218 based on a promised “phantom bill.”
She said the Conservatives have been clear that they are open to changing the bill’s wording in order to get it passed.
Jansen’s bill was defeated 187 to 141 on Wednesday afternoon, with the Conservatives, NDP and the Green Party’s Elizabeth May voting for the bill and Bloc Québécois and most Liberals voting against.
Two Liberal MPs — Marilyn Gladu, who left the Conservatives earlier this year, and Kent MacDonald — voted in favour.
If you or someone you know is struggling, here’s where to look for help:
The first-ever international guidelines on managing childhood obesity from the World Health Organization (WHO) are raising the profile of GLP-1 treatments for kids and teens — but with strict criteria and a high degree of caution.
The new global guidance, released on Wednesday, recommends a broad range of interventions to manage diet, boost physical activity and change behaviours for the rising number of global youth living with obesity. And in certain cases, for some older children and teenagers, that could also mean medication or bariatric surgery.
The WHO doesn’t recommend medical treatment, surgery or weight-loss devices for children up to the age of nine, the organization notes.
For older youth from the age of 10 to 19, medical treatments may be considered only when a supervised lifestyle program hasn’t achieved results, the guidance states, while bariatric surgery should only be an option under strict conditions for youth living with severe obesity.
“The foundation of obesity care for children and adolescents is not medicine or surgery, but access to comprehensive support that enables healthy eating, physical activity and sustainable behaviour change,” said Dr. Luz María De Regil, the WHO’s director of the department of nutrition and food safety.
WATCH | Cheaper GLP-1 drugs arrive in Canada:
Cheaper GLP-1s arrive in Canada: Are they safe?
A generic version of semaglutide, more commonly known by the brand name Ozempic, is now available in Canada as patent protections expire. For The National, CBC’s Christine Birak breaks down the key details about the drug’s safety, production and cost. [CORRECTION (June 4, 2026): The world map at 1:38 in this story shows a demarcation between Morocco and Western Sahara. In fact, the boundaries between the two are disputed.]
London, Ont.-based pediatric endocrinologist Dr. Marina Ybarra welcomed the organization’s cautious acknowledgement of medications as one avenue to tackle obesity.
Here in Canada, two GLP-1s are approved for weight management for youth aged 12 and up, but young patients typically have to pay for the drugs through their parents’ insurance or out of pocket, said Ybarra, who works with Western University and leads the London Health Sciences Centre Children’s Hospital pediatric weight management clinic.
“The news about WHO encouraging GLP-1 as a possible treatment for children living with obesity — I think it’s very good news,” she said.
“Because maybe that will help us to get funding through the public system in Canada for children living with obesity. That’s my biggest hope.”
170 million youth living with obesity
The WHO’s new guidance is meant to tackle skyrocketing rates of obesity among global youth.
Roughly 170 million children and teens around the world between the ages of five to 19 were living with obesity in 2024, the WHO noted. Obesity prevalence in this age group has also quadrupled since 1990, rising from two to eight per cent.
The global recommendations echo recent Canadian guidance to manage obesity in children. That long-awaited 2025 update also called for behavioural and psychological support and, in some cases, additional medical or surgical interventions.
But Canadian physicians recommend only using GLP-1s to manage obesity in children after the age of 12, two years above the WHO’s cutoff due, and don’t stipulate that medical intervention should only be tried after lifestyle changes.
“There is no evidence to support a stepwise approach whereby pharmacologic and surgical interventions should be offered only if behavioural and psychological interventions prove ineffective,” reads the guidance published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
“Using shared decision-making with families, health care providers should consider all intervention options.”
The WHO, in contrast, focused on the “practicality and universality” of diet, physical activity and behavioural changes as the pillars of obesity management, and it stressed the need for “structured long-term follow-up” in cases where patients use medication alongside other lifestyle interventions.
WATCH | Weight comes back quickly after stopping GLP-1s, study shows:
Weight comes back quickly after quitting GLP-1 drugs: study
People who abandon popular GLP-1 weight loss medications like Ozempic put weight back on quickly, researchers say. A new report found people who quit programs regained just under one pound per month, and were projected to return to their original weight within nearly two years.
Caution around GLP-1 use among children
GLP-1s and other similar medications — known by household brand names like Ozempic, Mounjaro, Rybelsus, Wegovy and Zepbound — have exploded in popularity among adults to treat obesity and diabetes, and for general weight loss, even without a clear medical need.
The drugs work by mimicking the body’s glucagon-like peptide-1 hormone, which helps manage appetite, slow digestion and regulate blood sugar.
Ybarra stressed the medications are now an effective tool for many young patients with obesity, helping to both reduce weight and improve quality of life.
While some children and teens face similar side effects to older patients, including nausea and other gastrointestinal issues, “we didn’t see many of the severe complications that were seen in the adult population,” Ybarra noted.
Younger and younger patients are also trying this growing class of drugs.
One U.S. study, published in the medical journal Pediatrics in September, revealed a 310-fold increase in GLP-1 prescriptions for children ages eight to 11, shooting up from 0.03 per cent to more than nine per cent between 2019 and 2026 — though overall use in this younger group remains rare.
Still, the WHO stressed the need for caution regarding GLP-1 use among children and teens, given limited research and the potential for misuse among certain groups, such as athletes or patients with eating disorders.
The WHO’s new guidelines note that overall evidence linked to various medication treatments for childhood obesity, including GLP-1s and other drugs such as metformin or sibutramine, was “generally of low quality due to short term follow-up and evaluation, and [due to] the small numbers of studies and participants.”
Ybarra agreed there’s a lack of long-term data for the use of GLP-1s among youth, given how new these drugs are for younger patients.
“The data we have though, it’s very reassuring and helpful — in terms of there’s more benefits than risks.”
WATCH | GLP-1s and cancer prevention:
GLP-1s and cancer prevention: What’s known and what isn’t
Early studies suggest GLP-1s, such as Ozempic, could help reduce the risk of some cancers, but scientists say there are still more questions than answers and more long-term studies are needed to really understand the potential.
Drug trials underway for younger kids
As for the line in the sand regarding children under 10 avoiding GLP-1s, the WHO’s María De Regil stressed in a Tuesday news conference that the agency “recommends prioritizing other interventions in this age group.”
“However, it is clear that the research is going in this area,” she said. “Some national pediatric associations may recommend it.”
Denmark’s Novo Nordisk and U.S.-based Eli Lilly are among the drug makers currently trialling pediatric obesity medications for kids as young as six, though María De Regil wouldn’t speculate on how any of those ongoing trials might change the WHO’s recommendations.
Major questions still remain about how children should safely use these types of drugs, and for how long, stressed María De Regil.
“We realize that this is a rapidly evolving field,” she said.
The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a statewide disaster emergency on Monday over a measles outbreak, the first such declaration by a U.S. state since cases began surging in 2025.
The state also expanded the pool of health professionals allowed to administer measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccines as cases rise in rural communities.
“No one should get seriously ill or die from a vaccine-preventable disease,” Hochul said in a statement.
New York has reported 108 measles cases this year through Oct. 3, including 92 since July 15 in under-immunized rural communities across 18 counties, well above typical annual levels, according to the executive order.
Seven of the cases are in New York City and 101 are elsewhere in the state, the governor’s office said. Local health departments have administered more than 1,000 MMR doses in rural areas since July 15.
WATCH | Trump signs executive order to reduce childhood vaccinations:
Trump signs executive order calling to reduce childhood vaccinations
U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order calling for fewer childhood vaccinations by limiting the inoculation schedule from 18 to 11 immunizations. The order also recommended splitting the childhood measles, mumps and rubella vaccine into three shots and delivering the shots at separate medical visits. Public health experts say the current U.S. schedule reflects decades of evidence and that fewer recommended shots will leave more children exposed to preventable diseases.
Neighbouring Pennsylvania is battling a fast-spreading outbreak, with 977 cases and five deaths as of Oct. 2, mostly in rural counties that border New York, the order said.
Pennsylvania health officials said on Monday the state’s total had passed 1,000 cases, making it the largest state outbreak in more than three decades.
The U.S. is having its worst year for measles since 1991, with nearly 3,900 cases reported, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The order allows registered nurses to order tests for suspected measles and pharmacists to vaccinate children as young as two. It also requires all MMR vaccinations to be reported to state or New York City immunization registries within 72 hours, while waiving adults’ consent for such reporting.
Vaccination itself still requires the consent of the patient or a legal guardian. The emergency took effect on Monday and runs through Nov. 4.
The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton launched an investigation on Tuesday into whether Fruit of the Loom and Hanes use toxic chemicals in producing children’s underwear.
Paxton said he sent civil investigative demands to Fruit of the Loom, which is owned by Berkshire Hathaway, and Hanes, which is owned by Canadian company Gildan Activewear, citing the chemicals’ potential effects on children’s health.
He did not accuse either company of wrongdoing.
Fruit of the Loom and Berkshire did not immediately respond to requests from Reuters for comment.
Montreal-based Gildan said it will co-operate with the investigation, and maintains strict manufacturing and sourcing standards to comply with industry guidelines related to harmful chemicals.
“We remain committed to providing safe, high-quality products for consumers,” it said in a statement to Reuters.
Gildan merged with Massachusetts-based HanesBrands Inc. last year in a $2.2-billion US deal.
Paxton said clothing manufacturers have turned increasingly to synthetic materials such as polyester, rayon and spandex to meet consumer demand for lower-priced products.
He said research shows that synthetic fabrics can shed microplastics, while chemicals including bisphenols, fluorine, parabens, phthalates and so-called “forever chemicals” used in textile manufacturing have been associated with cancer, hormone disruption, infertility and other health concerns.
“Forever chemicals” are also known as PFAS, short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances.
“We must protect our children who cannot yet protect themselves,” Paxton said in a news release.
“This includes making sure that the necessities parents rely on are free from toxic chemicals and do not harm the health of kids.”
The attorney general announced a similar probe in April into whether Vancouver-based Lululemon Athletica activewear contained “forever chemicals,” which do not break down easily in nature.
The race is among the country’s most closely watched in the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
WATCH | Canada moves to classify most ‘forever chemicals,’ or PFAS, as toxic substances:
Canada to add most ‘forever chemicals’ to toxic substances list
Canada is one step closer to moving a large swath of PFAS — a class of thousands of chemicals used in a wide range of products from food containers to clothing — to the country’s official list of toxic substances.
Kenyan health officials confirmed on Tuesday the country’s first Ebola death as an outbreak in the nearby Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) continues to spread.
The person was a Kenyan man who had been living in the DRC for the last seven years, Aden Duale, Kenya’s cabinet secretary of health, said in a press conference.
The Ministry of Health told ABC News the patient was 40 years old and traveled from Buta, a city in the northwestern DRC.
Duale said the patient fell ill about a month ago and was treated in several hospitals while in the DRC. He traveled from the DRC to Kampala, the capital of neighboring Uganda, by road, then boarded a Jambo Jet flight, arriving in Kenyan capital Nairobi last Saturday, Oct. 3.
The patient underwent a public health screening at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport and was taken by a friend to Nairobi Hospital, where he was isolated and later transferred to the East Wing Isolation Facility.
Duale said the patient had symptoms including fever, chills, fatigue, weakness, muscle pain, sore throat and painful swallowing. Doctors collected a sample from the patient, which was positive for Ebola and specifically Bundibugyo virus, a rare variant of Ebola behind the current DRC outbreak for which there are no vaccines and no treatments.
Kenya Health minister Aden Duale speaks to journalists as he announces the first case of Ebola virus in Kenya, Nairobi, Oct. 6, 2026.
Andrew Kasuku/AP Photo
Dr. Patrick Amoth, director general for health in Kenya’s Ministry of Health, said during the briefing that officials believe the patient knew he was ill and reached out to friends and relatives to transport him from the airport to the hospital directly.
“It is potentially possible that some of the medications that he was taking could be able to mask some of the symptoms and therefore give a false positive screening, meaning you could pass through the [airport screening system] because you have taken a medicine, say for example to lower your temperature,” Amoth said. “We believe that he knew that he was unwell.”
Duale said the patient was given supportive treatment but passed away on Monday evening.
“We take this opportunity to pass our sincere condolences to the family and friends of the departed. Arrangement for safe and dignified burial of the deceased are ongoing, and the burial is planned for later today in line with the Ebola safe and dignified public health protocols,” Duale said.
Duale said that 28 contacts of the patient, including family members and healthcare workers who attended to him, have been identified. Health officials are attempting to contact 23 more passengers and four crew members who were on the flight with the patient, and arrangements for quarantine among those at risk have been prepared.
“I wish to assure the public not to panic as all systems are in place to mitigate the spread of the disease,” Duale said. “The public is urged to continue with the frequent hand washing or use of alcoholic hand [wipes] and avoid close contact with sick people coming from countries reporting active transmission of Ebola disease.”
Amoth said Kenyan health officials are collaborating with immediate neighbors and partners including the neighboring country of Uganda, as well as the WHO.
“You [are not] able to put a wall between Uganda and [the DRC], between Kenya and Uganda, to prevent the entry of a pathogen,” he said. “Therefore, we continue to maintain a heightened state of alert, and what is important for us is to be able to pick [up] the disease when it arrives within our borders, and ensure that we prevent community transmission.”
People walk outside the Nairobi Hospital where the first Ebola patient had been admitted before he died in Nairobi, Kenya, October 6, 2026.
Monicah Mwangi/Reuters
Irene Bosire, Kenya deputy director of programs for the humanitarian nonprofit International Rescue Committee, said in a statement that with confirmation of the first imported Ebola case in Kenya, focus has shifted from preparedness to response.
“The IRC is working closely with national and county governments, following Kenya’s Ebola preparedness and response plan,” Bosire said. “We are supporting screening activities to track the disease, trace people who have been in contact with the patient to stop it spreading, share clear information with communities, and provide supplies to prevent infection.”
As of Oct. 3, 8,854 cases of Ebola and 4,114 deaths have been confirmed, according to the Congo Ministry of Health, with 824 patients in isolation.
The case fatality rate currently stands at 48.2% while contact tracing has improved since the summer to 73.8%, the ministry noted.
