By Angie DiMichele | adimichele@sunsentinel.com | South Florida Sun Sentinel
A child in Broward County was diagnosed with measles in April, making it the second confirmed case of the highly contagious disease in South Florida in 2025.
The child, who is under the age of 4, contracted the airborne illness outside of the United States, according to the state's Florida Health Charts website. The chart does not provide additional information about the confirmed case.
One other confirmed measles case has been reported in South Florida this year, in Miami-Dade County in March, the chart showed. No cases have been reported in Palm Beach County.
The first confirmed case in Florida this year was in a student at Miami Palmetto Senior High School in Miami-Dade.
More than a dozen measles outbreaks have been reported across the U.S. so far in 2025 and more than 1,000 cases have been confirmed across 31 states as of Thursday, the latest data available from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows. Cases began to spike in the U.S. this February, and by the end of March, 116 cases were reported in one week, a high so far this year.
Two-and-a-half decades ago, there were no cases of the viral disease spreading within the country and new cases were only detected when measles had been contracted abroad, meaning it was officially eliminated from the U.S., according to the CDC.
But the U.S. is on track to surpass 1,000 measles cases in at least 30 jurisdictions this year, with Texas reporting the most at nearly 730 cases. The CDC's data shows Florida has reported between 1 and 9 cases but does not include localized information.
Outbreaks can occur when measles enters communities where people are unvaccinated. The number of kindergartners in Florida who received all doses of vaccines required for school entry has declined in recent years, the CDC data shows.
In the 2023-24 school year, just over 88% of kindergartners had received all doses of all vaccines required, below the 95% the CDC says ensures protection for most people in a community. The year prior, about 90% of kindergarteners had received all required vaccines.
Broward County was the site of an outbreak in 2024, with nine out of the state's 10 confirmed cases. Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo faced backlash from health experts and politicians after sharing a letter to parents of students at Manatee Bay Elementary in Weston, where seven of the nine cases had been reported, that said they could decide whether to keep their children out of school.
Florida Department of Health surveillance data, which makes public the number of current cases of vaccine-preventable diseases by county, had been removed from the state website as of earlier this month and was last accessible in March, the South Florida Sun Sentinel reported on May 9. A Florida Department of Health spokesperson did not respond to an email on Friday seeking information on the new reported case or about the chart's accessibility.
The spokesperson told the Tallahassee Democrat on Friday that the chart website was not available recently because it was being upgraded.