State health officials Tuesday confirmed two additional measles-associated deaths in Pennsylvania, bringing the total number of measles-related deaths in the state this year to four.
One of the victims is an 18-year-old Mifflin County resident, according to the Mifflin County Coroner’s Office. The cause was acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, a rare and severe neurological complication of measles, it said.
The other is a 40-year-old Jefferson County woman who died Saturday. The Jefferson County coroner confirmed in a Facebook post that the woman’s death was “measles-related.”
Both individuals were unvaccinated, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Health.
Pennsylvania’s two previous measles-related deaths this year involved infants in Lancaster County. Both occurred in August and the county coroner reported that the virus itself caused one of the deaths. They represented Pennsylvania’s first measles-related deaths in 35 years.
Health officials said they conducted investigations with the cooperation of local coroner’s offices to confirm evidence of a measles infection in the victims, including a positive laboratory test, and that the deaths were not due to an unrelated cause.
The confirmation of two more measles-related deaths comes as cases continue to rise to historic levels in Pennsylvania, which is currently experiencing the worst measles outbreak in the country. As of Tuesday, the state health department confirmed 693 measles cases in 38 of the state’s 67 counties, with 99 new cases reported in the last week. Of those cases, 133 involved hospitalizations.
By comparison, there were 16 reported cases of measles in Pennsylvania in 2025, and 6 in 2024.
The four measles-related deaths reported by state and local officials do not square with figures from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which showed no such deaths this year as of Tuesday.
In a post to X on Tuesday, Gov. Josh Shapiro again blasted US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a Trump administration appointee with a history of raising alarms about established vaccines.
“This serious situation continues to be made worse by RFK Jr. playing games with public health and safety,” Shapiro posted. “It’s long past time for @SecKennedy to stop stoking vaccine skepticism and misinformation and compromising the serious mission of the nation’s public health agencies. It is also deeply concerning to learn that the Secretary personally intervened in an otherwise administrative process to direct the CDC to not report these Pennsylvania deaths, presumably because it doesn’t fit his phony narrative.”
Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.
