New York Governor Kathy Hochul declared a statewide measles emergency on Monday, signing an executive order as the state’s case count climbed to 108 for the year.
Executive Order 65 puts a State Disaster Emergency in place for all of New York through November 4. A disaster emergency gives the governor power to temporarily change or suspend certain state rules so officials can move faster than the usual red tape allows. Here, that means getting more vaccines into arms and more tests done.
“After reviewing the latest data on measles cases in New York State, I am declaring a State Disaster Emergency to strengthen our ongoing efforts to confront this disease,” Hochul said in a statement.
As of October 3, New York had confirmed 108 measles cases in 2026. Seven are in New York City, and the other 101 are spread across the rest of the state. Most of the spread is recent. Of the 108 cases, 92 have been reported since July 15, largely in rural communities across 18 counties where vaccination rates are low. Lewis County alone has recorded 11 cases.
The biggest change under the measles emergency is who can give the vaccine. Paramedics, advanced EMS providers, pharmacists and midwives can now administer the MMR shot, which protects against measles, mumps and rubella. That expanded group can vaccinate children as young as 2. Nurses can also now order measles tests, which before required a doctor.
Local health departments have already given more than 1,000 MMR doses in rural areas since the outbreak picked up. The state calls the vaccine the most effective protection against the disease.
Hochul’s measles emergency also comes with a crisis brewing next door. Pennsylvania had 977 cases and five deaths as of October 2, many in rural counties that border New York. This week, Pennsylvania passed 1,000 cases, making it the largest measles outbreak in the country in three decades. The last outbreak that size happened in New York City in the early 1990s and stretched over several years.
New York’s order is the first declaration of its kind since measles cases began rising across the country in 2025.
Measles spreads easily through the air and can lead to pneumonia, brain swelling and death. One rare complication, called subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, is brain inflammation that can show up years after someone recovers from measles and cause permanent brain damage.
Outbreaks take hold when vaccination rates in a community fall below about 95 percent, the level needed to keep measles from moving person to person.
The surge is happening while the nation’s top health official is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti vaccine activist who chaired the group Children’s Health Defense for years before Trump named him Secretary of Health and Human Services. Since taking over in 2025, Kennedy fired all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the expert panel that guides national vaccine policy, and replaced them with vaccine skeptics. He also moved to shrink the childhood vaccine schedule, changes a judge has since halted.
Kennedy has claimed the measles vaccine causes deaths “every year.” The Infectious Diseases Society of America says no deaths have been shown to be linked to the MMR vaccine in healthy people. At a congressional hearing this year, Kennedy insisted, “I have never been anti-vaccine,” while also claiming vaccines are not properly tested for safety. He has argued the national outbreak began in January 2025, before he took office.
More recently, Kennedy has changed his tune, telling parents on CNN they should get their children vaccinated for measles and calling the shot effective.
The stakes reach beyond New York. The United States declared measles eliminated in 2000, meaning the disease was no longer spreading continuously inside the country. In November, officials with the Pan American Health Organization, the regional arm of the World Health Organization, will meet to decide whether the US and Mexico keep that measles free status.
