U.S. measles cases pass 5,000, the most since 1991
Nov 7, 2026
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The United States has recorded 5,182 confirmed measles cases in 2026, the most since 1991, federal data released Friday showed, days before a regional review that could end the country's measles elimination status.
The count is more than double the 2,289 cases of 2025, and children and teenagers make up about 59% of them, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention figures reported by Bloomberg and Al Jazeera. The Pan American Health Organization said in March that it would review U.S. elimination status at its November meeting; a country loses the status after 12 months of uninterrupted spread of one viral lineage.
The Food and Drug Administration also opened an investigation of tumors in patients treated with the spinal muscular atrophy gene therapy Zolgensma, and HCA Healthcare said about 10,000 of its physicians will be documenting with ambient AI by year's end.
THE DETAILS
- WatchIncident Nov 6, 2026
The Pan American Health Organization reviews a year of U.S. transmission data next week, Bloomberg reported, and could revoke elimination status.
The CDC confirmed 5,182 measles infections nationwide on Friday, the highest count since 1991, and the outbreak has reached 45 states, Bloomberg reported. Of the cases, 4,993 are outbreak-associated, 18% are in children under 5 and 41% in those 5 to 19, according to Al Jazeera's account of the CDC data. The CDC lists four measles deaths, while Pennsylvania counts six measles-associated deaths among 1,487 cases, Al Jazeera reported, and New York and Wisconsin each reported a death this month; the CDC said it is working with state epidemiologists on a standard definition of a measles death. Kindergarten MMR coverage fell from 95.2% in the 2019-2020 school year to 92.4% in 2025-2026, according to the CDC. The Pan American Health Organization's verification commission will weigh whether one lineage has circulated for 12 months, and Utah's outbreak has spread since June 2025, Bloomberg reported. - ActIncident Nov 6, 2026
FDA says patients and trial participants given Zolgensma or Itvisma should be monitored for tumor formation, with tumors reported to Novartis or MedWatch.
The FDA said Nov. 6 it is investigating a serious risk of malignancy after postmarketing reports of central and peripheral nervous system, spinal and paraspinal, and kidney tumors in patients treated with Zolgensma for spinal muscular atrophy. In two cases, tumor tissue showed the therapy's AAV vector DNA integrated into the genome upstream of or within the GLI1 gene, and a third GLI1-associated case is under study. Novartis said nine of about 6,000 recipients developed tumors, BioPharma Dive reported. The agency applies the risk to Itvisma, the intrathecal version, because it shares the vector, though no tumors have been reported after it; FDA said benefits still outweigh risks and it is weighing whether labeling and follow-up studies are adequate.Sources: FDA, BioPharma Dive - FYIDeployment Nov 4, 2026HCA Healthcare expects about 10,000 physicians to use its Commure ambient documentation tool by the end of 2026, including hospitalists and emergency physicians in more than 100 of its roughly 189 hospitals and about 3,000 outpatient clinicians, chief clinical officer Dr. Michael Schlosser told Becker's. The tool saves about five minutes per note, or one to two hours per shift, and outpatient physicians have added patients to their schedules, he said; HCA has invested in Commure and plans a companywide rollout by the end of 2027. A separate AI nurse handoff tool built with Google is heading to about 100 hospitals within two months after pilots in which handoff-related safety events and near misses "basically have gone to zero," Schlosser said. Becker's reported no figures on documentation completeness or claim denials, which HCA said it is tracking.
- FYIEvidence Nov 6, 2026A prediction model built into Vanderbilt University Medical Center's electronic record, which invited ANA-positive patients with high risk scores for expedited rheumatology evaluation, shortened the time from a positive test to an autoimmune disease diagnosis (hazard ratio 1.9; 95% CI 1.3 to 2.7), according to a 2-year randomized pragmatic study in NEJM AI. Of 2,385 patients randomized 1:1, 954 intervention and 1,006 control patients were analyzed; among those diagnosed, the median time was 43 days with the model and 138 days without it. Among patients seen by rheumatology within 6 months, 23% in the intervention group and 16% of controls received an autoimmune diagnosis (P=0.07). The authors said no evidence-based guidance exists for triaging positive ANA results for referral.Sources: NEJM AI, PubMed record
- FYIMoney Nov 4, 2026The final 2027 hospital outpatient rule pays 340B hospitals the average sales price minus 28% for drugs they buy through the program, which CMS estimates will save about $5.45 billion in 2027, including about $900 on average for each beneficiary who receives a qualifying drug. It also extends physician fee schedule-equivalent rates to imaging without contrast, including CT, MRI, x-ray, ultrasound and bone density scans, at off-campus hospital outpatient departments, an estimated $9 billion saving over 10 years. Outpatient payments rise 2.3%, 637 services leave the inpatient-only list and the ambulatory surgery center list grows by several hundred procedures, according to MedTech Dive and CMS. The American Hospital Association's Ashley Thompson called the "continued assault on the 340B program" deeply disturbing, MedTech Dive reported.
- FYIWorkforce Nov 5, 2026Ochsner Health is designing a primary care model with target panels of 3,000 to 5,000 patients that pairs advanced practice providers and pharmacists with ambient listening and its digital medicine program, Dan Shields, its CEO of digital medicine, said at a Becker's roundtable. Ochsner is building AI agents for chronic disease care that list next-step options for the physician, who makes the final call, and its own risk model from electronic record data rather than claims. "It's not telling the doctor what to do; it's saying, here are your options," Shields said. He cited research estimating that evidence-based care for a 2,000-patient panel would take 27 hours a day, or 8 to 9 hours with team-based care; Ochsner has reported no outcome data for the AI tools.Source: Becker's Hospital Review
- FYIEvidence Nov 2, 2026Adults starting oxybutynin, tolterodine or solifenacin for overactive bladder had a lower hazard of incident dementia than those starting mirabegron or vibegron (HR 0.90; 95% CI 0.87 to 0.93), and low-risk anticholinergics did not differ from beta-3 agonists (HR 0.97), in a retrospective Epic Cosmos cohort of 830,393 patients aged 40 to 90 published in JAMA Network Open. Weighted 10-year dementia risk was 20.0% with beta-3 agonists and 18.1% with high-risk anticholinergics, and longer anticholinergic use was not associated with higher risk. E-values of 1.20 to 1.29 meant modest unmeasured confounding could explain the differences, the authors said. They concluded that earlier reports of higher risk with anticholinergics may reflect residual confounding rather than a drug effect.Sources: JAMA Network Open, PubMed record