The Most Contagious Disease In The World Is Spreading In US Airports

Anna Robinson
Sat, January 3, 2026 at 10:00 AM EST

People wearing surgical masks in an airport - Xifotos/Getty Images

In 2020, COVID-19 caused travel restrictions and other changes to how people get around. Avoiding getting sick while traveling is tricky, as COVID-19, flu, and common colds easily spread when dozens of people sit shoulder to shoulder inside planes, trains, or buses. However, another disease has added itself to the list. Measles is on the rise, and health officials have detected it in airports.

The New Jersey Department of Health sent a press release stating that it detected measles in a traveler who was at the Newark Liberty International Airport on December 12, 2025. The department has undertaken contact tracing efforts in case the passenger infected others. Another case appeared in a passenger who flew to and from Boston Logan International Airport (one of the busiest in the country) on December 11 and 12.

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health sent a press release of its own. The press release emphasized that measles is preventable through vaccines, making the nationwide rise in cases all the more surprising. Per the Centers for Disease Control, over 2,000 people in the U.S. tested positive for measles in 2025, numbers not seen since 1992.

Why the measles resurgence is occurring

Man in hazmat suit spraying an empty plane - David Silverman/Getty Images

Gavi, an organization working to increase medical vaccine access worldwide, explained that measles is the most contagious virus based on how many others just one person can infect, a measurement called R0. Like COVID-19 and the flu, measles spreads through particles in the air after someone carrying the disease coughs or sneezes. Its particles also linger in the air for up to two hours, meaning you can catch measles even without direct contact. After around two centuries of documented measles existence, researchers created a vaccine in the 1960s.

Vaccine skeptics have long existed around the world, but recent years have seen a higher percentage of parents choosing not to vaccinate their children. Gavi attributes this to vaccine misinformation, the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, and other global crises. Multiple health officials have publicly tried to ease people's minds by stating that vaccines are safe and effective as long as enough members of a population receive them.

Getting measles despite being vaccinated is incredibly uncommon, but all travelers can take solace in the fact that cases are still fairly low nationwide. If you think you might be sick, wearing a mask can prevent you from spreading anything.

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New York, Washington, Maine Abolish Religious Exemptions for Measles Vaccine,

No Exceptions: New York, Washington, Maine Abolish Religious Exemptions for Measles Vaccine, California Looks to Limit Medical Exemptions

By Laura Fay | June 17, 2019

A nurse waits for patients at the Rockland County Health Department in Haverstraw, Rockland County, New York, a hotspot in the ongoing measles outbreak. (Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images) 

Update, June 18: California Sen. Richard Pan updated the proposed legislation there to expand the list of medical conditions for vaccine exemptions and loosen the role of government oversight in granting exemptions. The state Assembly Health Committee is expected to vote on the measure Thursday, according to The Los Angeles Times.

The measles outbreaks that have spread through different parts of the country this year are causing lawmakers and advocates in several states to rethink their policies about vaccinations, despite ongoing skepticism and sometimes-fierce political pushback from anti-vaxxers.

New York, Maine and Washington state have all taken steps to restrict vaccine exemptions based on religious beliefs this year, and California is considering a measure to tighten up its existing policy governing medical exemptions.

Since Jan. 1, 1,044 cases of measles have been reported in the United States. The disease was declared eliminated from the U.S. in 2000, but the Centers for Disease Control warned in May that if the outbreaks continue through the summer and fall, the United States could lose its status as a country that has eradicated measles.

The most recent measles death in the U.S. occurred in 2015, but before the vaccine was common, the disease killed hundreds of children each year, according to the CDC. 

Religious Objections to the Measles Vaccine? Get the Shots, Faith Leaders Say

Devout parents who are worried about vaccines often object to ingredients from pigs or fetuses. But the leaders of major faiths have examined these fears and still vigorously endorse vaccination.

A demonstrator in Rockland County, N.Y., after officials banned unvaccinated children from public spaces. The Anti-Defamation League has strongly objected to the appropriation of Holocaust symbols by vaccine critics.

Mike Segar/Reuters

By Donald G. McNeil Jr.
April 26, 2019


The measles outbreak in the United States is now the largest since the disease was declared eliminated here 19 years ago. The return of this scourge has been driven by one factor in particular: misinformation, spread by vaccine critics, that scares parents into not immunizing their children.

Along with rumors that vaccines cause autism or that the trace amounts of mercury and aluminum in them are dangerous — falsehoods that were long ago debunked — have come innuendos aimed at deeply religious parents.

Vaccines, the activists say, contain ingredients made from pigs, dogs, monkeys and aborted fetuses. Indeed, most of those assertions are based in fact. Ingredient lists published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Institute for Vaccine Safety at Johns Hopkins show that vaccines may contain these elements (although any residual DNA is present only at the parts-per-million level).

Nonetheless, vaccination is endorsed by top Jewish and Islamic scholars, and by the Vatican. Religious authorities have meticulously studied how vaccines are made and what is in them, and still have ruled that they do not violate Jewish, Islamic or Catholic law.

Although no vaccine is without side effects, immunization is one of the greatest advances in medicine. The World Health Organization estimates that vaccines have saved more than 10 million lives in just the last decade.

A policeman guarded health workers as they administered polio vaccine in Karachi, Pakistan, in 2016.

Shahzaib Akber/European Pressphoto Agency

“Since it is proven that vaccines are effective to prevent the spread of disease, it is an obligation upon every father to vaccinate his children,” Rabbi Moshe Sternbuch, vice president of the Rabbinical Court in Jerusalem, recently wrote in an open letter to the dean of a major Orthodox yeshiva in the United States.

Vaccines are highly purified, but they still may contain isolated cells or traces of DNA from the human or animal cells they were grown in. Those “growth media” include cell lines originally derived — often decades ago — from monkey or dog kidneys, moth caterpillars, calf blood, or the immature tissues of aborted human fetuses. (The widely circulated assertion that vaccines contain rat DNA is untrue.)

Some vaccines grown in eggs or using dairy products contain residual egg or casein proteins. And in some vaccines, the manufacturers add small doses of gelatin made from pig skin to prevent damage from heat or freeze-drying.