Pa. announces two measles deaths, bringing total to 4 in ongoing outbreak

Two more Pennsylvanians have died after becoming infected with measles, health officials said, bringing the number of deaths in the commonwealth attributed to the virus to four.

State Department of Health officials said Tuesday the dead are an 18-year-old from Mifflin County, according to the county coroner, and a 40-year-old Jefferson County woman, who died Saturday. Both were unvaccinated, the department said.

The deaths are in addition to two Lancaster County infants who died after exposure to the virus.

The Mifflin County Coroner’s Office said Tuesday a review of medical records indicated the teenager, who was not otherwise identified, died of acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, which is a rare and severe neurological complication of measles.

Jefferson County Coroner Greg Furlong said in a Facebook post that the woman who died had tested positive for measles after being exposed to the virus by a close contact who had also recently tested positive. The woman suffered from a lung condition and was dependent on oxygen but would not have died without the virus, Furlong told The Guardian.

In a news release, the Health Department stressed that the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine is the best protection against measles. Two doses of the vaccine provides lifetime protection at a 97% immunity rate.

“My thoughts are with the two families who lost loved ones to this highly-contagious virus, as Pennsylvania faces the worst measles outbreak in more than three decades,” Pennsylvania Health Secretary Dr. Debra Bogen said. 

“We remain committed to working with our partners across Pennsylvania to stem this outbreak and prevent more deaths. That means ensuring people have the facts about measles and access to the MMR vaccine – which kept measles outbreaks at bay for decades,” she added.

Measles is an airborne virus that spreads through breathing, coughing, or sneezing. It causes high fevers, coughs, and red, watery eyes, initially. That’s followed by a rash that begins at the head and progresses down the body three to five days after symptoms begin.

So far, the outbreak has sickened 693 people in 38 counties. According to the Health Department’s measles dashboard, last updated Monday, fewer than 1% of those infected were fully vaccinated and 133 people were hospitalized with complications of the virus. 

The deaths in Lancaster County were the commonwealth’s first fatal measles-related cases in 35 years and the first in the country this year. The virus had been considered eliminated in the United States, but has made a resurgence in the midst of a movement against vaccination over the past two decades. 

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) lists 3,294 confirmed measles in 47 states in its latest update Thursday. 

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime skeptic of vaccine safety, questioned the first reports of deaths in Lancaster County late last month. 

The outbreak comes as the CDC is changing the way it counts measles cases, according to reports. In a note on its website this month, the agency said it would use data from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), drawing criticism from public health officials. That system is used to track long-term mortality trends. 

Previously it used the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS), which supplies the CDC with data directly from state and local health departments.  

The CDC’s measles webpage includes an asterisk for the number of measles deaths in 2026 with a note that the NCHS does not have death records from this year listing measles as an underlying cause. It also says it is working with a national council of epidemiologists to develop a standard definition of death due to measles.