The US has now recorded 1,277 measles cases this year, according to case data collected by Johns Hopkins University, making the current outbreak the most severe since 1992. The disease continues to spread, and by now most schools are out for the summer. July summer camps have opened and family vacations are picking up — all creating new opportunities for the virus to transmit.

The next few months will be crucial for getting measles under control in the US.

Three people have already died this year, the first measles deaths in the country in a decade. Most of the cases have been concentrated in a major outbreak in the Southwest — in New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas — but the virus is now also spreading in Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, and Ohio. New outbreaks have recently sparked in Colorado, Montana and North Dakota. Though cases are still rising, they’re doing so more modestly than they were in March, when the country was seeing 100 or more new cases in a week. The measles outbreak does appear to be slowing down, experts say.

But as cases continue to spread, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in mid-June urged kids’ summer camps to check their participants for measles immunity status. Measles is one of the world’s most contagious viruses and, with vaccination rates declining among children across the country, a lot of kids tightly cloistered for several days creates a prime environment for measles to spread quickly once introduced. The CDC’s new checklist for summer camps advises camp organizers to collect vaccine records from campers and keep the documentation on hand, to check campers and staff for any signs of fever or rash upon........

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