{"id":172018,"date":"2026-02-27T21:35:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T21:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/172018\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T21:35:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T21:35:07","slug":"florida-measles-cases-jump-almost-25-in-a-week-making-it-the-state-with-the-3rd-most-in-the-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/172018\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida measles cases jump almost 25% in a week, making it the state with the 3rd most in the country"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Florida has the third-most <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/miami\/tag\/measles\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\">measles<\/a> cases in the country and is on track to be the second-highest.<\/p>\n<p>According to the Florida Department of Health&#8217;s Reportable Diseases Frequency Report released this week, the number of diagnoses for 2026 jumped almost 25 percent, from 92 on Feb. 14 to 114 on Feb. 21.<\/p>\n<p>Currently, Florida is the third state with the most measles cases so far this year, according to the U.S. Measles Tracker, a dashboard hosted by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.<\/p>\n<p>But the Sunshine state is only nine cases behind Utah, which has 123 confirmed measles diagnoses for 2026. Florida&#8217;s numbers lag behind by five days and are updated every Thursday, however, while Utah&#8217;s cases update at least every Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>South Carolina, which has been the epicenter of an outbreak that originated in Spartanburg County, has the most confirmed cases with 653, according to the tracker.<\/p>\n<p>In Florida, about three quarters of this year&#8217;s cases, 82, are in Collier County, according to DOH. A <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/measles-cases-at-university-in-florida-soar-amid-growing-outbreaks-nationwide\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">measles outbreak<\/a> was reported there at Ave Maria University in late January.<\/p>\n<p>The &#8220;vast majority&#8221; of the university is vaccinated, and DOH is currently &#8220;on-site providing care and guidance,&#8221; according to the school&#8217;s website.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Other counties with reported <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/measles-elimination-rfk-jr-cdc-deputy-downplays\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">measles cases <\/a>this year are: Alachua, Broward, Duval, Escambia, Hillsborough, Lee, Manatee, Miami-Dade, Pinellas and St. Johns.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Approximately 81% of the reported measles cases are among people 15 to 24, according to DOH&#8217;s data, and 76 out of the 114 cases were acquired within the state.<\/p>\n<p>DOH&#8217;s reportable disease tracker does not display the vaccination status of measles cases.<\/p>\n<p class=\"content__tags__label\">In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Florida has the third-most measles cases in the country and is on track to be the second-highest. According&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172019,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[50308,28,30,29,571,17196,13949],"class_list":["post-172018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-centers-for-disease-control-and-prevention","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-health","tag-measles","tag-utah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}