The global measles outbreak puts its eradication in Catalonia at risk.

Barcelona"If the current trend continues, we will have 200 cases of measles this year," warns Jacobo Mendioroz, Deputy Director General of Surveillance and Emergency Response at the Public Health Agency of the Generalitat (Catalan Government). The rise in cases and outbreaks is increasing worldwide, including in Catalonia: while around 30 people were diagnosed with the disease in 2024, last year the figure was approximately 90. Although the disease has been considered eliminated for ten years, the progressive increase in infections means that the possibility of it circulating freely is greater. Most of the cases detected in Catalonia last year were imported from other countries, and Mendioroz predicts that this scenario will be repeated in 2026 because the incidence of the disease is growing worldwide. Therefore, however good the vaccination coverage in Catalonia may be, if more imported cases arrive, the risk of local outbreaks could "double or triple," the expert asserts, since measles is extremely contagious. In fact, it is the most infectious of all vaccine-preventable diseases.

Last year, a situation similar to the one the expert predicts was already observed in Catalonia;a major measles outbreak originating in an anti-vaccine family in Sant Pere de RibesHundreds of people in the Garraf region were put on alert due to the infections. Sources from the Catalan Health Department have confirmed to ARA that the outbreak has finally been contained with a total of 15 related cases, but they also emphasized that it placed a tremendous strain on Public Health professionals to contain it. It is estimated that for every positive case, there are 100 contacts who must be monitored because they can become ill if they have not been vaccinated. In addition to Public Health professionals, during the Garraf outbreak, primary care centers (CAPs) also had to contact families to vaccinate children under five years old who were not immunized against the disease or who had not received the two doses necessary to complete the vaccination schedule. For all these reasons, Mendioroz believes it is very difficult for the system to cope with a significant increase in the disease, as there are not enough resources to trace all contacts if cases surge. "The strategy cannot be to trace and contain every positive case and their contacts, because the service will eventually become overwhelmed," he argues. Therefore, he reiterates that vaccination is the most effective (and also the most economical) way to prevent infection, break the chains of transmission, and move closer to the goal of eliminating the disease.

A global resurgence

Despite the current increase in cases, the World Health Organization (WHO), which declared Spain to have eliminated the disease in 2016, still maintains this status. However, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted vaccination programs for a significant portion of the global population, leading to a surge in cases in Spain. To combat this global increase in cases, the Spanish Ministry of Health developed the Strategic Plan for the Elimination of Measles and Rubella 2021-2025, which aimed to improve vaccination coverage and strengthen infection detection during the post-pandemic period.

Even so, it hasn't managed to curb the rise in cases: 227 infections were detected in 2024, and according to provisional figures for 2025, the total number of positive cases last year was 397. Of all the cases diagnosed in each region, the second most populated autonomous community, and, if we look at the incidence rates, there are other territories in the country where measles has had a greater impact. The autonomous communities that have detected the most cases this year are Andalusia, with 94; the Basque Country, with 51; the Balearic Islands, with 39; the Canary Islands, with 38; and the autonomous city of Melilla, with 31.

The vast majority of cases come from other countries or are related to an imported outbreak, and, according to data from the Ministry of Health, three out of every four people who have been infected had not received the vaccine. "We will continue actively searching for cases and recommending vaccination, including for people traveling to countries where the disease is endemic," says Mendioroz, who emphasizes that last year they made a significant effort to curb the spread of outbreaks. It's important to note that this data comes amid a massive resurgence of the disease in Europe that began in 2014, with more than 35,000 infections, according to the annual report from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). Within European countries, Romania is a major hotspot, accounting for more than 80% of cases on the continent in 2014 and reporting 8,454 infections last year. But you don't have to go that far to find higher infection rates than those in Catalonia, as the UK, for example, reported 847 cases and the Netherlands, more than 500. The largest transmission cluster last year near Catalonia, however, was in Morocco, which reported more than 44,000 suspected cases (not all of which turned out to be positive) and 95 deaths. In fact,the first imported cases detected in CataloniaIn early 2025 they came from the epidemic that the North African country was experiencing.