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Measles has killed four people in Pennsylvania as confirmed cases pass 700
September 22, 2026
Pennsylvania's measles outbreak has killed four people and hospitalized 150 since April, and the CDC is working out how it defines a death from measles.
Measles was eradicated in the US decades ago, and deaths from it were rare until this outbreak; states, not the federal government, issue death certificates and pass cause-of-death data to the CDC.
The New York Times reports that measles has killed four people in Pennsylvania and put 150 in hospital since April, with more than 700 cases now confirmed, the largest in the country. Cases have reached 38 of Pennsylvania's 67 counties, and Lancaster County, 60 miles west of Philadelphia, sits at the center of the outbreak. State health officials put August's rise in vaccinations at 84 percent, The New York Times reports, even as other residents hold to their opposition to the shots.
The Guardian reports the federal end of the same outbreak. Pennsylvania has logged 731 cases, a number John Goldman, an infectious disease doctor at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, reads as an undercount, and he told The Guardian the outbreak “seems to be accelerating”. Goldman had seen measles twice in his working life, in 1988 and in 1992, and doctors in the state are now treating newborns who caught the virus in the womb or at birth. The Guardian also reports that the CDC has leaned on a definition of measles deaths set by the World Health Organization while it works alongside the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists on one of its own. Erica Schwartz, who directs the CDC, told The Guardian that politics has nothing to do with how the deaths were counted, and she pointed instead to the work of writing that definition. Debra Houry, a former CDC chief medical officer, calls the delay curious, and members of Congress asked on Monday for an immediate briefing on the change in how these deaths are reported.
Each outlet works a different end of the same outbreak, one from Lancaster County and one from the CDC. The case count, the hospitalizations and the rush to vaccinate are documented in detail by the outlets that carry them. What the CDC will count as a death from measles is not finished, and the deaths in Pennsylvania have not yet reached its data.
Still developing
The CDC has not created a definition for measles deaths, and the count of Pennsylvania's deaths remains delayed. The Guardian reports that its questions about the delay did not receive a response.
How settled the reporting is
Sources
- The New York Times — Pennsylvania Measles Outbreak Leads to an Increase in Vaccinations - The New York Times
- The Guardian — Why the CDC is excluding measles deaths in Pennsylvania even as outbreak appears to be ‘accelerating’
Toggle read the full reports of 4 of the 5 outlets counted on this event. The other 1 are counted from their headlines and opening sentences.