Report: Utah has "barely acknowledged" ongoing measles outbreak

• Since cases appeared last summer, Utah had diagnosed more than 440 cases as of Tuesday, with almost 100 in the past three weeks.

State of play: The Utah Department of Health and Human Services updates case counts weekly on its website but hasn't addressed the outbreak on Facebook or X since the first cases were diagnosed last summer, and public briefings are rare, NBC noted.

The other side: Measles is a recurring theme on Instagram, the platform where health officials have found the most traction, DHHS spokesperson Mike Grass told Axios.

Zoom out: By contrast, South Carolina has organized mobile vaccine clinics, brought in outside public health experts to help track cases and staged weekly public briefings.

• Immunizations in January were more than double the same month in 2025, South Carolina's health department reported.
• New diagnoses there have declined sharply since early February, while the disease has surged in Utah.

Meanwhile, Utah officials are "telling people to talk to their health care providers about whether getting vaccinated is the right move for them," Grass told Axios.

Caveat: Utah's public health system is decentralized, leaving local health departments mostly responsible for direct containment measures like pop-up clinics.

• The state coordinates more behind the scenes, advising health care providers and school districts, Grass said.

Zoom in: In southwest Utah — the epicenter of the outbreak, with more than 200 cases so far — the local health department hasn't hosted vaccine clinics because there isn't demand, a health official there told NBC.

• They pointed instead to social media and radio appearances — but as of Tuesday, measles hadn't been mentioned on the department's accounts for a month.