In 2019, measles infected at least 860,000 people and killed over 200,000 worldwide.
According to Gizmodo, the World Health Organization says it's a roughly 50% jump in deaths from the highly contagious but vaccine-preventable viral illness.
What's more, the novel coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic is likely to make this situation even worse.
Outbreaks were especially large and uncontrolled in Africa and Europe, which the WHO says was fundamentally due to the failure to vaccinate.
Many countries this year have documented declines in routine vaccinations, including the US.
Experts fear the pandemic will thwart the battle against diseases such as measles, HIV, and tuberculosis--particularly in already-struggling regions.
