WASHINGTON (AP) – A top U.S. health official on Sunday urged people to get vaccinated against measles amid outbreaks in several states and as the United States is at risk of losing its measles-elimination status.
“Get the vaccine, please,” said Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services whose boss 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 your vaccine for.”
An outbreak in South Carolina in the hundreds has surpassed the number of cases recorded in the Texas outbreak in 2025, and there is also one on the Utah-Arizona border. Several other states have had confirmed cases this year. The outbreaks have had the most impact on 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 it is declared eradicated by public health officials.
Asked in the television interview if people should be afraid of measles, Oz replied, “Oh, sure.” He said that Medicare and Medicaid will continue to cover the measles vaccine as part of the insurance programs.
“There will never be a barrier to Americans having access to the measles vaccine. And it’s part of the main schedule,” Oz said.
But Oz also said he “always advocated for measles vaccines” and that Kennedy “was at the forefront of that.”
Questions about vaccines did not come up until later in Kennedy’s interview 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 argued that the health secretary’s long-standing skepticism about US vaccine recommendations and past sympathy for the unfounded claim that vaccines can cause autism could influence official public health guidance in ways contrary to medical consensus.
Oz argued that Kennedy’s position was supportive of the measles vaccine despite Kennedy’s general comments on the recommended vaccine schedule.
“When the first outbreak happened in Texas, he said, get your measles vaccines, because that’s an example of a disease you should be vaccinated against,” Oz said.
The Republican administration last month dropped some vaccine recommendations for children, an overhaul of the traditional vaccine 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 address vaccination recommendations and consider revising US guidance accordingly.
States, not the federal government, have the authority to require vaccinations for school children. While federal requirements often influence those state regulations, some states have begun creating their own alliances to fight the administration’s vaccine guidance.
US vaccination rates have fallen and the share of children with exemptions has hit an all-time high, according to federal data. At the same time, rates of vaccine-preventable diseases, such as measles and whooping cough, are increasing across the country.
Kennedy’s past anti-vaccination 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 closely 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 employees at the US Embassy and the United Nations said Kennedy sought to meet with top Samoan officials during his trip to the Pacific island nation.
Samoan officials later said Kennedy’s trip boosted the credibility of anti-vaccination activists before the measles outbreak, which sickened thousands of people and killed 83, mostly children under 5.
Mixed messages about autism, vaccines
Oz’s comments mark a broader pattern among administration officials expressing 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 vaccination policy, often seeming at times to express sympathy for unfounded conspiracy theories from anti-vaccination activists, while also not straying too far from established science.
During a Senate hearing Tuesday, Jay Bhattacharya, the director of the National Institutes of Health, said that no single vaccine causes autism, but he did not rule out the possibility that research may find some combination of vaccines may have negative side effects on health.
But Kennedy, in his Senate testimony, claimed that a link between vaccines and autism has not been denied.
He previously claimed that some components of vaccines, such as the preservative thimerosal which contains mercury, can cause neurological disorders in childhood such as autism. Most measles, mumps and rubella vaccines do not contain thimerosal. A federal vaccine advisory panel arranged by Kennedy last year voted not to recommend more thimerosal-containing vaccines.
Administration public health officials often cite the need to restore confidence in public health systems in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, when vaccination 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 spread during the pandemic, and long-standing anti-vaccination activist groups have seen increased interest from the wider public.
Kennedy, who for years led the anti-vaccination activist group Children’s Health Defense, has been criticized for ordering reviews of vaccines and public health guidelines that major medical research groups considered established science.
Public health experts have also criticized the president for making unfounded claims about highly politicized health issues. During a September Oval Office event, Trump asserted without evidence that Tylenol and vaccines are linked to an increase in the incidence of autism in the United States.