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A leading U.S. health official urged Americans Sunday to get inoculated against measles as outbreaks have grown across several states and the country faces the risk of losing its measles elimination status. CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz, speaking as measles cases rise, said people should “take the vaccine, please,” adding, “We have a solution for our problem.”
Oz, a heart surgeon who leads the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, urged measles vaccination while addressing broader controversy around vaccine guidance in the Trump administration. He defended recently revised federal vaccine recommendations and also responded to past comments by President Donald Trump’s health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., about vaccines and their use.
In an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union,” Oz said, “Not all illnesses are equally dangerous and not all people are equally susceptible to those illnesses,” and then turned specifically to measles. “But measles is one you should get your vaccine,” he told the program, framing the disease as a condition that warrants vaccination.
Oz also said public health coverage would not become a barrier for people seeking the measles vaccine. He told CNN that Medicare and Medicaid will continue to cover the vaccine as part of insurance coverage, adding, “There will never be a barrier to Americans get access to the measles vaccine. And it is part of the core schedule.”
The measles outbreaks Oz referenced have involved multiple parts of the country, according to the Associated Press. The AP reported that an outbreak in South Carolina has reached the hundreds and has surpassed the recorded case count in Texas’ 2025 outbreak, and that there is also an outbreak on the Utah-Arizona border. The AP said multiple other states have had confirmed measles cases this year, with outbreaks mainly affecting children.
The AP also reported that infectious disease experts have warned that rising public distrust of vaccines generally may be contributing to the spread of measles, a disease that public health officials once declared eradicated. The concern about vaccine confidence intersects with the administration’s recent changes to childhood immunization guidance, the AP said.
Oz’s comments about vaccines come amid criticism of Kennedy’s record and the administration’s shifting approach to vaccine recommendations. Critics have argued that Kennedy’s longtime skepticism about vaccines and past sympathy for claims that vaccines may cause autism could influence official public health guidance in ways that conflict with the medical consensus.
In response, Oz said Kennedy had been supportive of measles vaccination despite the health secretary’s broader stance. Oz said that when the first measles outbreak happened in Texas, Kennedy told people to get measles vaccines “for measles,” describing it as an example of an ailment that people should be vaccinated against.
The AP said vaccine concerns did not come up later in a separate Kennedy interview on Fox News Channel’s “The Sunday Briefing,” where Kennedy was asked about a Super Bowl snack. The report also noted that Kennedy has faced scrutiny over earlier statements and activism related to vaccines.
Beyond Oz’s immediate appeal, the AP described a wider pattern among administration officials of voicing discordant and, at times, contradictory statements about vaccine efficacy during an overhaul of U.S. public health policy. The AP also reported that, during a Senate hearing Tuesday, Jay Bhattacharya, the director of the National Institutes of Health, said no single vaccine causes autism but did not rule out the possibility that research could find some combinations could have negative health side effects.