A third person has died of measles in the US, health officials say

By Umar Farooq and AFP. Published On 13 Sep 202613 Sep 2026.

Key points

• There have been 3, 294 cases of measles in the US so far in 2026, according to the Centers for Disease Control, throughout more than 45 states.
• In 2025, there were 2, 289 cases in the country and three deaths, according to the agency.
• Measles was declared eliminated in the US in 2000, but has created a comeback over recent years.
• Health authorities did not identify the woman, but stated she died of complications associated with measles on Saturday.
• Some 124 of these cases involved individuals having to be hospitalised.

Notably, a 40-year-old woman in the state of Pennsylvania has died of measles, becoming the third person to die from 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, " Greg Furlong, the medical examiner for Jefferson County, regarding 230km (143 miles) northwest of Philadelphia, stated in an official note posted online on Sunday.

County authorities cautioned residents that measles is a highly contagious and potentially deadly disease, and pressed them to "take appropriate steps to protect themselves and their families". The Washington Post, citing Furlong, documented that the woman was unvaccinated.

Meanwhile, the state of Pennsylvania has additionally been the site of the other two measles-related deaths to occur this year in the US, noted by authorities to have happened in August. Both were in Lancaster County, a largely rural, agriculture-dependent area home to a sizeable Amish population, a conservative Christian population which has lower vaccination rates than other groups in the US. Those two deaths additionally involved unvaccinated residents, according to state health authorities.

According to the Pennsylvania Department of Health, the state has recorded 676 total cases of measles so far this year, with 108 new cases being documented in the last week. Some 124 of these cases involved individuals having to be hospitalised. Almost a third were children. Less than 1 percent of all cases in the state were individuals who were fully vaccinated. Lancaster County, according to the state agency, has accounted for 295 of all cases in Pennsylvania in 2026.

Measles was declared eliminated in the US in 2000, but has created a comeback over recent years. It some experts have linked to a rise in vaccine scepticism.

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

After the state confirmed the first two measles deaths, US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F Kennedy Jr, a well-known vaccine sceptic, accused Pennsylvania's Democrat-led administration of "weaponization of infectious disease fears for political gain" in a post on X, and raised the possibility the announcement "may even have been altogether fabricated", in August.

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, in turn, has accused Kennedy of spreading conspiracy theories and observed that he spoke at an event in Lancaster County a number of years ago, "downplaying the severity of measles and saying that the cure was 'chicken soup and vitamin A'".

In short, a third person has died of measles in the US, health officials is the central thread here, and readers can expect follow-up reporting as the picture becomes clearer.