--- title: Measles Outbreak in South Carolina Sparks Concern description: More than 130 unvaccinated students in two South Carolina schools are being quarantined after they were exposed to measles. canonical: https://time.com/7325656/measles-outbreak-south-carolina-school-year/ author: Chantelle Lee article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2025-10-14T19:53:50.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-11T00:24:39.879Z article:section: Health og:title: Measles Outbreak in South Carolina Sparks Concern og:description: More than 130 unvaccinated students in two South Carolina schools are being quarantined after being exposed to measles. og:url: https://time.com/7325656/measles-outbreak-south-carolina-school-year/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt113fdeb8ca6b8669/6998cac407a30dc85177d6ec/Measles-South-Carolina.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: US-NEWS-MED-TEXAS-MEASLES-DOCTORS-TB og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Measles Outbreak in South Carolina Sparks Concern twitter:description: More than 130 unvaccinated students in two South Carolina schools are being quarantined after being exposed to measles. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt113fdeb8ca6b8669/6998cac407a30dc85177d6ec/Measles-South-Carolina.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Measles Outbreak in South Carolina Sparks Concern for the Year Ahead > Sponsored content. 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Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. by [Chantelle Lee](https://time.com/author/chantelle-lee/) ## Chantelle Lee Reporter Oct 14, 2025 7:53 PM UTC  A dose of the measles vaccine is seen at the Logan Square Health Center in Chicago on May 9, 2019. A dose of the measles vaccine is seen at the Logan Square Health Center in Chicago on May 9, 2019. Antonio Perez—Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service/Getty Images by [Chantelle Lee](https://time.com/author/chantelle-lee/) ## Chantelle Lee Reporter Oct 14, 2025 7:53 PM UTC More than 130 unvaccinated students at two schools in South Carolina are being quarantined after they were exposed to measles, amid an ongoing outbreak in the state—a sign, public health experts warn, that cases could continue to rise this school year. On Tuesday, the South Carolina Department of Public Health [confirmed](https://dph.sc.gov/news/tuesday-measles-update-dph-increases-measles-case-count-16-total-2025-12-related-upstate) the 16th case of measles in the state so far this year. Last week, public health officials [said](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baOoDM-Bn2g) in a media briefing that more than 100 unvaccinated students at Global Academy and Fairforest Elementary School were exposed to measles and would be excluded from school for 21 days, which is when the period of potential disease transmission has ended. Of the 16 cases in the state, five are people who were exposed in school settings and have been quarantining at home over the past few days, according to South Carolina health officials. Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, says the fact that the students in South Carolina were exposed to measles demonstrates why people should be worried about rising cases as children return to the classroom. “We’ve had a growing population of susceptible children whose parents have chosen not to vaccinate them,” Offit says. “This is the most contagious human infection, and it’s not surprising that as kids go back to school, and we enter the winter and early spring months, that you see this virus once again surging.” The outbreak in South Carolina comes amid surging measles cases across the country. This summer, measles cases in the U.S. reached a [33-year record high](https://time.com/7301457/measles-cases-record-vaccine/), causing public health experts to warn that other diseases could experience a similar resurgence. Minnesota is also in the midst of an outbreak; as of last week, there are [20 confirmed or probable cases](https://www.health.state.mn.us/diseases/measles/stats.html) in the state so far this year. Public health officials have stressed that the best way to protect against measles is to get vaccinated with the [measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine](https://time.com/7261250/measles-vaccine-what-to-know/), which is typically administered in childhood in two doses. Experts have said that a successful vaccination program was a large part of the reason that measles was declared eliminated from the country more than two decades ago. But vaccination rates have [plummeted](https://time.com/7290450/measles-vaccination-rates-declining-study/) in recent years, and measles cases have soared. According to the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention](https://www.cdc.gov/measles/data-research/index.html) (CDC), when more than 95% of people in a community are vaccinated against measles, mumps, and rubella, “most people are protected through community immunity." But the CDC’s data show that only 92.7% of kindergarteners were vaccinated during the 2023-2024 school year. That number has dropped to about 90% in some parts of South Carolina, according to [state public health officials](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baOoDM-Bn2g). **Read More:** [_Do You Need a Measles Vaccine Booster?_](https://time.com/7278878/do-you-need-a-measles-vaccine-booster/) As of last week, the CDC has [confirmed](https://www.cdc.gov/measles/data-research/index.html) 1,563 cases of measles so far this year. Many of those cases are from an outbreak in Texas that began in late January, which sickened more than 700 people and killed two unvaccinated children in Texas and an unvaccinated adult in New Mexico. In August, Texas health officials [declared](https://time.com/7310528/measles-texas-outbreak/) that the outbreak was over, but they cautioned that the threat posed by the disease was not. At the time, Offit [said](https://time.com/7310528/measles-texas-outbreak/) that while the Texas outbreak had subsided, he feared that case numbers would surge again in a matter of months. Offit also expresses concern that the national case numbers confirmed by the CDC are an undercount. He criticizes [Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.](https://time.com/7222309/rfk-jr-confirmed-hhs-public-health-react/), a vaccine skeptic who has made a [number](https://time.com/7313128/covid-19-vaccine-recommendations-cdc-fda/) of [changes](https://time.com/7292553/rfk-jr-removes-cdc-vaccine-committee-experts/) to the country’s [immunization policy](https://time.com/7319049/vaccine-children-news-cdc-covid-mmrv/), for [undermining](https://time.com/7318017/susan-monarez-testifies-senate-hearing-cdc-rfk-jr/) health agencies’ ability to track and monitor the disease. “Not only do I think this is getting worse, I think we’re not going to know about it because the surveillance capacity has been so diminished by our Secretary of Health and Human Services,” Offit says. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/7325656/measles-outbreak-south-carolina-school-year/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/7325656/measles-outbreak-south-carolina-school-year/"},"headline":"Measles Outbreak in South Carolina Sparks Concern for the Year Ahead","datePublished":"2025-10-14T19:53:50.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-11T00:24:39.879Z","description":"More than 130 unvaccinated students in two South Carolina schools are being quarantined after they were exposed to measles.","url":"https://time.com/7325656/measles-outbreak-south-carolina-school-year/","keywords":["Disease","News Desk"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt113fdeb8ca6b8669/6998cac407a30dc85177d6ec/Measles-South-Carolina.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Chantelle Lee","jobTitle":"Reporter","url":"https://time.com/author/chantelle-lee/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt113fdeb8ca6b8669/6998cac407a30dc85177d6ec/Measles-South-Carolina.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"US-NEWS-MED-TEXAS-MEASLES-DOCTORS-TB","caption":"US-NEWS-MED-TEXAS-MEASLES-DOCTORS-TB","creditText":"Antonio Perez—Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/disease/","name":"Disease"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/7325656/measles-outbreak-south-carolina-school-year/","name":"Measles Outbreak in South Carolina Sparks Concern for the Year Ahead"}}]}] ```