A 40-year-old woman died Sept. 12 from measles complications in Jefferson County, Pa., marking the state’s third measles-related death of 2026 and the first reported outside hard-hit Lancaster County.
Jefferson County Coroner Greg Furlong confirmed the death Sept. 12, calling it the county’s first measles fatality. The woman’s vaccination status was not disclosed, and the coroner’s office declined to identify her.
“Many people associate measles with a childhood illness, but it can lead to severe complications in individuals of any age,” Jason Stiver, the county’s chief deputy coroner and public relations officer, said in a Sept. 12 Facebook post. “Measles is highly contagious and can result in serious respiratory illness, hospitalization and, in rare cases like this, death.”
The death is the first the state has tied to measles in an adult during the current outbreak. Pennsylvania’s two earlier deaths, both in Lancaster County, were infants — one a 6-week-old with a rare genetic disorder, the other a newborn a county coroner had ruled died from a ruptured spleen.
The causes of those two deaths remain contested. The CDC excluded them from its national dashboard pending review, a decision public health experts criticized as politicizing state death determinations. As of Sept. 11, the agency’s dashboard listed 3,294 U.S. measles cases across 45 states and zero deaths for 2026 — a figure that omits Pennsylvania’s count.
Pennsylvania’s outbreak, concentrated in Lancaster County, has sickened more than 670 people and led to 124 hospitalizations. The Jefferson County case, roughly 200 miles northwest, signals the virus is moving beyond that cluster. The coroner’s office said it is working with the Pennsylvania Department of Health on the case.
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