WASHINGTON (AP) — A top U.S. health official urged people Sunday to get measles shots as outbreaks in several states and the United States risk losing its measles-free status.
“Get the vaccine, please,” said Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services whose chief has raised doubts about the safety and importance of vaccines. “We have a solution to our problem.”
Oz, a heart surgeon, defended some recently revised federal vaccine recommendations, as well as past comments by President Donald Trump and the nation’s health chief, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., about the effectiveness of vaccines. From Oz, there was a clear message about measles.
“Not all diseases are equally dangerous and not all people are equally susceptible to those diseases,” he told CNN’s “State of the Union.” “But measles is one you should get vaccinated for.”
An outbreak of hundreds in South Carolina has surpassed the number of cases recorded in the 2025 Texas outbreak, and there is also one on the Utah-Arizona border. Several states have had confirmed cases this year. The outbreaks have mostly affected children and come as infectious disease experts warn that growing public distrust of vaccines in general may be contributing to the spread of a disease once declared eradicated by public health officials.
Asked in the television interview whether people should be afraid of measles, Oz replied: “Oh, absolutely.” He said Medicare and Medicaid will continue to cover the measles vaccine as part of their insurance programs.
“There will never be a barrier to Americans getting access to the measles vaccine. And it’s part of the core program,” Oz said.
But Oz also said that “I’ve been advocating for measles vaccines all along” and that Kennedy “was right in front of that.”
Questions about vaccines didn’t come up until later in an interview with Kennedy on Fox News Channel’s “The Sunday Briefing,” where he was asked about what kind of Super Bowl snack he might have (probably yogurt). He also eats steak with sauerkraut in the morning.
Kennedy’s critics have argued that the health secretary’s long-standing skepticism of US vaccine recommendations and past sympathy for the unsubstantiated claim that vaccines can cause autism may influence official public health guidance in ways contrary to medical consensus.
Oz argued that Kennedy’s position supported the measles vaccine, despite Kennedy’s general comments on the recommended vaccination schedule.
“When the first outbreak happened in Texas, he said, get your measles shots, because that’s an example of a disease you should get vaccinated against,” Oz said.
The Republican administration dropped some childhood vaccine recommendations last month, an overhaul of the traditional vaccination schedule that the Department of Health and Human Services said was in response to a request from Trump.
Trump asked the agency to review how peer nations approach vaccine recommendations and consider revising U.S. guidance accordingly.
States, not the federal government, have the authority to require vaccinations for school children. While federal requirements often influence these state regulations, some states have begun creating their own alliances to counter the administration’s vaccine guidelines.
U.S. vaccination rates have fallen, and the share of children with exemptions has reached an all-time high, according to federal data. At the same time, rates of vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles and whooping cough are rising across the country.
Kennedy’s past anti-vaccine activism
Kennedy’s past skepticism about vaccines has come under scrutiny since Trump first nominated him to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
During his Senate confirmation testimony last year, Kennedy told lawmakers that a scrutinized 2019 trip he took to Samoa, which came before a devastating measles outbreak, “had nothing to do with vaccines.”
But documents obtained by The Guardian and The Associated Press undermine that testimony. Emails sent by US Embassy and United Nations employees said Kennedy sought to meet with senior Samoan officials during his trip to the Pacific island.
Samoan officials later said Kennedy’s trip bolstered the credibility of anti-vaccine activists ahead of the measles outbreak, which sickened thousands and killed 83, most of them children under 5.
Mixed messages on autism, vaccines
Oz’s comments mark a broader pattern among administration officials of making discordant and sometimes contradictory statements about the effectiveness of vaccines amid an overhaul of US public health policy.
Officials have walked a fine line in criticizing past US vaccine policy, sometimes appearing to express sympathy for the unfounded conspiracy theories of anti-vaccine activists without straying too far from established science.
During a Senate hearing Tuesday, Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health, said no vaccine causes autism, but did not rule out the possibility that research could find that a combination of vaccines could have negative health side effects.
But Kennedy, in Senate testimony, argued that a link between vaccines and autism has not been disproved.
He has previously argued that some components of vaccines, such as the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal, can cause childhood neurological disorders such as autism. Most measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines do not contain thimerosal. A federal vaccine advisory board reviewed by Kennedy last year voted to no longer recommend thimerosal-containing vaccines.
Public health administration officials often cite the need to restore trust in public health systems after the coronavirus pandemic, when vaccine policy and the overall public health response to the deadly pandemic have become a highly polarizing topic in American politics.
Misinformation and conspiracy theories about the public health system have also proliferated during the pandemic, and longtime anti-vaccine activist groups have seen a surge in interest from the general public.
Kennedy, who for years led the anti-vaccine activist group Children’s Health Defense, has come under fire for ordering reviews of vaccines and public health guidelines that top medical research groups have dismissed as established science.
Public health experts have also criticized the president for making unsubstantiated claims about highly politicized health issues. During an Oval Office event in September, Trump claimed without evidence that Tylenol and vaccines are linked to an increase in autism in the United States.