Parents tried to shield their children from vaccines. Instead they got measles

SPARTANBURG COUNTY, S.C. – The Global Academy of South Carolina, a public charter school, is housed in a glittering modern building on a sprawling campus, a 10-minute drive from spunky downtown Spartanburg. It has Ukrainian- and Russian-language teachers on staff, reflecting that many of its roughly 600 students belong to a thriving Slavic community, whose lives revolve around the evangelical churches in surrounding Spartanburg County.

But on Oct. 8, South Carolina’s public health department made an ominous announcement: Global Academy was one of two schools in Spartanburg County where measles had been detected. Only 21% of its students were vaccinated, one of the worst rates for a public school in the state.

By Tuesday, the outbreak centered in Spartanburg County had grown to 990 cases, mostly in unvaccinated children, accounting for the vast majority of current cases in the U.S. Two children have developed a serious complication, measles encephalitis, an inflammation and swelling of the brain.

Spartanburg, on the border of North Carolina, is now ground zero for the largest measles outbreak since 2000, when the virus was declared eliminated in the U.S.

People have been exposed not just in niche communities, but also where the public goes every day – Costco, Best Buy, Publix, Food Lion, Goodwill, Burger King, Walmart, Target, the library, a museum and the post office.

“This is unprecedented,” said Dr. Linda Bell, the state epidemiologist, at a news conference in February.

Measles was vanquished more than 25 years ago because of high rates of vaccinated schoolchildren. But in Spartanburg, those mandates have been weakened by vaccine skepticism and the state’s religious exemption, which has driven vaccination rates perilously low.

Many parents want the right to decide medical treatments for their children. But the recent contagion shows what happens when that safety net is clipped.

“We have allowed measles to have a foothold in this country again, which is very unfortunate,” said Dr. Tom Frieden, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who now leads a global health nonprofit, Resolve to Save Lives.

The exemptions

States have long mandated immunizations before children can start day care or school. But 46 states grant exemptions for religious or personal beliefs, according to KFF, a nonprofit health policy research organization.

South Carolina has allowed parents to claim religious exemptions since at least 1980. To qualify, they simply must attest that immunizations “conflict with my religious beliefs.”

The number of exemptions had, until recently, remained relatively low.

But during the pandemic, anti-vaccination activism grew, with parents objecting to what they saw as coercive mandates with the COVID vaccine. More parents began claiming religious exemptions.

In Spartanburg County, the percentage of students with religious exemptions has more than doubled from 4.5% to 9.6% in the 2021-22 school year.

Today, 89% of Spartanburg’s students have childhood immunizations, including measles, well below the 95% coverage needed to prevent the virus from spreading.

Statewide, kindergarten vaccination has fallen to 91% in the 2024-25 school year from 95% in 2019-20, according to the CDC. Nationally over the same time period, the percentage has dropped to 93% from 95%. Bell said at a recent weekly news conference that “exemptions have had a big role” in the outbreak.

The momentum is going in the wrong direction, said Dr. Dan Jernigan, who resigned in protest in August as the director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, which is part of the CDC.

“You’ve got some people wanting to get rid of the baseline,” he said, “and for it to be purely voluntary.”

The uphill battle

There is some evidence that the outbreak has been scary enough – and state response effective enough – that people sought out vaccination. More than 16,800 doses of measles-mumps-rubella vaccine were administered statewide in January an increase of more than 40% from January 2025. In Spartanburg County, vaccinations rose by 162% in January 2026 from January 2025.

Each jab represents a hard-fought victory. Doctors must somehow talk to skeptical parents in a way that does not alienate them, said Dr. Joshua Brownlee, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the medical school at University of South Carolina, Greenville.

“You can’t be too finger-waggy,” he said. “You have to listen.”

The state has offered free vaccinations at health vans, parking them at a community center and churches. But the uptake has been disappointing. From October to mid-February, the vans have dispensed 71 doses of the measles vaccine, with 22 of them in children, the state said.

But people may be getting their vaccine behind closed doors, through doctors and pharmacies, said Jernigan. Public health authorities, he said, must offer shots, to some degree, on the down-low.

They must make sure that people “know how to get the vaccine in ways that they don’t have to show up and be in front of a camera,” Jernigan said. “They’re trying to meet people where they are, which is part of what you do in public health.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.