Third Measles Death in US Confirmed as Pennsylvania Woman Succumbs to Disease

A 40-year-old woman in Pennsylvania has died from measles, a disease declared eliminated in the US in 2000.

Published On 13 Sep 202613 Sep 2026

A 40-year-old woman in Pennsylvania has died of measles, marking the third fatality in a rare outbreak of the preventable disease in the United States.

“This is a heartbreaking loss for the family and an unfortunate reminder that measles can be a serious and potentially life-threatening disease,” said Greg Furlong, the medical examiner for Jefferson County, located approximately 230km (143 miles) northwest of Philadelphia, in a statement posted online on Sunday.

Health officials did not identify the woman, stating she died of complications associated with measles on Saturday.

County officials warned residents that measles is a highly contagious and potentially deadly disease, urging them to “take appropriate steps to protect themselves and their families.”

The Washington Post, citing Furlong, reported that the woman was unvaccinated.

Pennsylvania has also been the site of the other two measles-related deaths in the US this year, which authorities reported occurred in August. Both fatalities were in Lancaster County, a largely rural, agriculture-dependent area home to a large Amish population and a conservative Christian demographic that typically has lower vaccination rates than other groups in the US. State health authorities confirmed that those two deaths also involved unvaccinated individuals.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there have been 3,294 cases of measles in the US so far in 2026, spanning more than 45 states.

In 2025, the country recorded 2,289 cases and three deaths, according to the agency.

The Pennsylvania Department of Health reports that the state has recorded 676 total cases of measles so far this year, with 108 new cases reported in the last week alone. Of these, 124 cases required hospitalization. Nearly a third of the infected individuals were children, and less than 1 percent of all cases in the state involved fully vaccinated people. Lancaster County alone accounts for 295 of all cases in Pennsylvania in 2026, according to the state agency.

Measles was declared eliminated in the US in 2000, but has experienced a resurgence in recent years, which some experts attribute to a rise in vaccine skepticism.

In recent months, President Donald Trump’s administration has openly clashed with local health authorities, including in Pennsylvania, disputing the state’s characterization of the deaths earlier this year as measles-related and removing them from its national accounting of the outbreak’s progression.

In August, following the state’s announcement of the first two measles deaths, US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F Kennedy Jr., a well-known vaccine skeptic, accused Pennsylvania’s Democrat-led government of “weaponization of infectious disease fears for political gain” in a post on X, and suggested the announcement “may even have been altogether fabricated.”

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, in turn, has accused Kennedy of spreading conspiracy theories and pointed out that he spoke at an event in Lancaster County several years ago, “downplaying the severity of measles and saying that the cure was ‘chicken soup and vitamin A’.”

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