Measles has seen a significant resurgence in Jalisco so far in 2026, with 385 cases registered in the first 20 days of January, representing 50.6% of the 760 cases nationwide.
To contain the outbreak, Jalisco health authorities aim to administer just over 1.3 million doses of the vaccine within a maximum of 45 days, bringing the total to 2 million doses administered.
According to the daily report on the measles outbreak in Mexico, 760 confirmed cases have been recorded from January 1st to 20th. However, since the first case was registered in the country in February 2025, the total number of accumulated cases nationwide has reached 7,188.
Chihuahua has the highest number of accumulated cases, with 4,495, but so far in 2016 it has reported only four cases, indicating that the outbreak is under control.
Stay informed: The largest measles outbreak is concentrated in Jalisco: Health Ministry
In second place is Chiapas, which has registered 186 confirmed cases this year, mostly in the San Cristóbal de las Casas region, and 433 accumulated cases since 2025.
The Director General of Public Health, Roberto Carlos Rivera Ávila, explained that the lack of vaccination and failure to respect the isolation period during the Christmas and New Year holidays by people with a probable or confirmed diagnosis of measles created a turning point that accelerated the outbreak’s spread, as it is estimated that a single infected person can infect up to 16 others.
Thus, while just over 600 cases were reported in the last five months of 2025, the records showed more than 300 infections in just the first 15 days of January 2026.
He explained that of the more than 1,000 accumulated cases reported to date in Jalisco, 93% correspond to people who had not received any vaccines or had incomplete vaccination schedules.
“If we achieve 95% coverage (among the nearly 8 million people who live in the state), then there won’t be any sick people, and that’s what we need,” he explained.
He indicated that an intensive campaign has been launched to encourage the public to go to any health center to get vaccinated.
“We had administered just over 666,000 doses, but this includes not only the last few months of 2025, but all of last year and so far this year. Our goal to control this outbreak is to administer approximately 2 million vaccines, which would be ideal. Reaching 1.5 million or 1.6 million would be acceptable, but our ideal would be those 2 million vaccines in 30 days, or at the latest 45 days. This is the challenge set at the State Health Council meeting,” he stated.
Rivera pointed out that children under 5 years old are at the highest risk of developing complications and neurological sequelae due to brain inflammation or damage to the auditory and visual nerves.
Source: informador
