Experts with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are headed to South Carolina soon amid a measles outbreak there, a state official said on March 4.
The CDC has approved a request for help from South Carolina and is sending three Epidemic Intelligence Service officers, Dr. Linda Bell, South Carolina’s state epidemiologist, told reporters during an online briefing. The team is expected to arrive next week and will assist South Carolina officials for up to two weeks in analyzing information they’ve collected during the outbreak.
“We plan to look at data that will help us better understand chains of transmission in school settings,” Bell said.
The outbreak in South Carolina started in the fall of 2025. The CDC has not sent personnel there since the outbreak began, and Bell said South Carolina had not asked for help until recently.
Epidemiologists with the CDC Foundation, a nonprofit created by Congress to support the CDC’s work, are already in South Carolina helping with day-to-day work such as speaking with infected people, Bell said. The CDC Foundation paid for the personnel.
“These are staff available at no cost to us, and they’re placed with us for months to do that on-the-ground disease containment measures,” she said.
Bell has said the outbreak appeared to be slowing, but on Wednesday told reporters she was concerned about spring break due to the number of people expected to travel, noting there had been a jump in cases around Christmas.
“The measles vaccine is the best way to protect against unexpected exposures, against ongoing spread, additional complications, and the costs and disruptions that this outbreak is causing us,” she said.
Nearly all of the infected people in South Carolina had not been vaccinated, according to state data, although 45 had received at least one dose of the measles vaccine.
Bhattacharya also said that the vaccine is the best way to prevent measles, a position shared by some other groups. However, certain organizations such as Physicians for Informed Consent maintain that the vaccine poses more of a risk to many people than measles.
The briefing took place several hours after the South Carolina Senate Medical Affairs Subcommittee rejected in a 6-2 vote a bill that would have removed the option for parents to obtain a religious exemption to the requirement that school students receive the measles vaccine.