Arizona’s largest measles outbreak in more than 30 years is showing promising signs of slowing down.
Arizona has confirmed 313 measles cases since August 2025. The vast majority of those — 285 cases — have been in Mohave County around the small community of Colorado City.
But it has now been about three weeks since Mohave County reported a new measles case, Arizona Department of Health Services data shows. And Nicole Witt, assistant director of the division of public health preparedness with ADHS, said recent wastewater sampling from the Colorado City area also indicates a notable drop in the presence of the virus.
“For quite some time we were reporting on average around 10 cases every week [in Mohave County], and more recently that has slowed and that’s definitely an encouraging signal for us,” Witt said. “We are optimistic and hopeful that that maintains and that we can get to a point where we can officially declare this outbreak over.”
Measles symptoms can take up to three weeks to appear after exposure. So public health officials typically wait until there have been no new infections for two full incubation periods, or six weeks, before they consider a measles outbreak to be over.
By that measure, Colorado City still has about three weeks to go before its outbreak is deemed finished.
Colorado City sits just south of the Utah border and wastewater samples from some nearby southern Utah communities have shown positive detections for measles within the past three weeks, Utah Department of Health and Human Services data shows.
The highly contagious disease has also recently appeared in other parts of Arizona. Pinal County reported one new measles case this week and Maricopa County reported a new case the week before.
Witt said it is still too soon for Arizonans to let their guard down.
“It’s definitely something that we’re still concerned about and we’d still recommend that individuals don’t lose sight of this and continue to stay up-to-date with their MMR, which we know is the best protection for measles,” Witt said.
Witt noted 96% of Arizona’s recent measles cases have been among unvaccinated people.
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