Two unvaccinated residents of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania have died from measles, the state’s first deaths from the disease in 35 years.
Story Snapshot
- Pennsylvania’s Department of Health confirmed two measles deaths in Lancaster County on Tuesday, August 25, 2026.
- Both victims were unvaccinated, and officials have not released further personal details, citing privacy.
- These mark the first measles deaths in the United States in 2026 and Pennsylvania’s first in 35 years.
- Pennsylvania has logged 393 measles cases across 28 counties so far this year, part of a larger national surge.
State Confirms First Measles Deaths Since the Early 1990s
The Pennsylvania Department of Health announced the deaths on Tuesday, saying both people lived in Lancaster County and had not been vaccinated against measles.
State officials called it the first time in 35 years that measles has killed anyone in Pennsylvania. The agency did not release the ages, genders, or health histories of the two victims, citing privacy protections for the families involved.
Two people have died in Pennsylvania from measles, the state health department said. Both were unvaccinated.
These are the first deaths related to measles within the state in 35 years and the first deaths reported this year in the U.S.
Read more: https://t.co/Vs2KNDIxWt pic.twitter.com/YnxDa1kyko
— ABC News (@ABC) August 25, 2026
Reuters, which first reported the confirmation, noted these are also the first measles deaths recorded anywhere in the United States this year. That distinction matters because measles deaths had become so rare that health officials once treated them as nearly eliminated in this country. Lancaster County has been the center of Pennsylvania’s outbreak for months, driving most of the state’s case count.
A Statewide Outbreak That Kept Growing All Year
Pennsylvania has now recorded 393 measles cases across 28 counties in 2026, according to state figures cited by the New York Post. That number has climbed steadily since spring, when the Shapiro administration reported just 84 cases concentrated in the Lancaster-Lebanon region.
By May, cases had already reached their highest level since 1991, and by August, the virus had reached counties as far away as Clinton, Elk, and Warren.
State health officials have repeated one detail throughout the outbreak: almost none of the infected were vaccinated. Earlier state data showed 22 of 23 cases in one update were unvaccinated people, and later tallies found zero vaccinated individuals among hundreds infected statewide.
That pattern held even before the fatalities were announced, and it lines up with decades of public health research showing measles hits unprotected populations hardest.
Before this week, Pennsylvania’s outbreak had produced dozens of hospitalizations but no deaths. A radio report from mid-August put the hospitalization count at 62 people statewide, with health officials noting at the time that no one had died. That changed within days, as the outbreak’s severity caught up with its size.
How This Fits the National Picture
Nationally, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had recorded 2,777 confirmed measles cases in the United States as of August 20, 2026, with zero deaths logged before the Pennsylvania announcement. That contrasts with 2025, when the country saw three measles deaths, including two children, during a smaller outbreak year.
Measles was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000, meaning sustained transmission had stopped, but imported cases and pockets of unvaccinated communities have kept the virus circulating since.
Public health agencies worldwide have long treated measles as a disease that punishes low vaccination rates specifically, not chance exposure alone.
The World Health Organization estimated 95,000 measles deaths globally in 2024, calling it a highly contagious, preventable illness that mostly kills unvaccinated or under-vaccinated people.
Global vaccination campaigns have cut measles deaths by 88 percent since 2000, a track record that makes any reversal in the United States notable.
Pennsylvania’s outbreak, and now its first fatalities in a generation, arrives as childhood vaccination rates have slipped in schools across several states. Two deaths out of hundreds of cases is a small fraction, but it breaks a 35-year streak that officials had come to see as evidence the vaccine works.
The Pennsylvania Department of Health has continued urging vaccination as its central message, framing the deaths as a warning rather than an isolated tragedy.
Sources:
abcnews.com, washingtonpost.com, nypost.com, usnews.com, mountnittany.org, radio.wpsu.org, pa.gov
