Canada is at risk of losing its measles elimination status if the spread of the highly contagious disease continues into the fall, warns a senior advisor with the Public Health Agency of Canada. Dr. Marina Salvadori issued the warning as Ontario reported nearly 200 new infections this past week, adding to growing concern that prolonged transmission beyond mid-October could strip the country of the status it achieved in 1998.
While the potential loss of elimination status may sound alarming, Salvadori emphasized that it does not mean measles will become permanently re-established in Canada. “That could happen. But I think that when people hear ‘lose elimination status,’ they have a lot of fear that measles will re-establish itself again and be common,” she said. “Even if elimination status ends, I do believe that we can eliminate measles again in our country.”
Elimination status refers to the absence of continuous disease transmission for at least 12 months in a given area. Since an outbreak began in October, Ontario has confirmed 1,440 probable and confirmed cases, according to Public Health Ontario. The province reported 197 new cases in the last week alone.
Salvadori noted that Canadian public health officials are collaborating with their counterparts in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and public health agencies in Mexico to compare findings and formulate a unified response to the continent-wide surge in cases. “We’re all dealing with the same thing,” she said, “and we’re all working really well together to help get insights and understand what’s going on.”
In Ontario, 101 individuals have been hospitalized, 75 of them children. Eight people have required intensive care. Dr. Sarah Wilson, a physician at Public Health Ontario, pointed out that hospitalization has occurred in about seven percent of cases during the outbreak. “To me, that’s another really clear representation of how measles infections can have very severe complications and it absolutely is not a trivial infection,” said Wilson.
Alberta has also seen rising numbers, reporting 313 cases since mid-March, including 19 hospitalizations. Saskatchewan’s Chief Medical Health Officer, Dr. Saqib Shahab, announced Thursday that the province has seen 27 cases so far and expects daily case increases to continue. “We are now in Saskatchewan part of the unprecedented North American measles outbreak,” said Shahab. “We should not be seeing measles in 2025. That we are seeing some outbreaks in specific communities as if it was the 1950s means that the social contract of keeping each other safe and protected is broken.”
Meanwhile, Manitoba has reached 24 reported cases. Nova Scotia and the Northwest Territories both recorded their first measles cases of the outbreak earlier this week, further underscoring the national scope of the resurgence.