By David French
NEW YORK, Sept 13 (Reuters) – The death toll in Pennsylvania’s measles outbreak rose this weekend with a county coroner’s report of a woman’s death from complications related to the disease.
The coroner’s office of western Pennsylvania’s Jefferson County reported that a 40-year-old woman died on Saturday from complications associated with measles. The commonwealth has seen an outbreak of the highly-infectious disease, adding to a resurgence of measles in the United States as official data shows declining U.S. vaccination rates.
The coroner’s office said it was working with the Pennsylvania Department of Health.
“This is a heartbreaking loss for the family and an unfortunate reminder that measles can be a serious and potentially life-threatening disease,” Coroner Greg Furlong said in a statement posted on Facebook.
The state Department of Health said on Friday that it has confirmed 676 measles cases across Pennsylvania in 2026, with 124 measles-related hospitalizations.
The first U.S. measles-related deaths of the year were reported by the Pennsylvania Department of Health on August 25.
The Pennsylvania Department of Health said it is conducting its own review of the Jefferson County case based upon its detailed epidemiological case definition for a measles-associated death. That definition was provided to the CDC and the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) on September 10, the statement added.
The CDC did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Jefferson County death.
U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr — a long-time skeptic of vaccines — asked his new CDC director to remove a reference to the two deaths from the agency’s online measles tally after he questioned whether the disease contributed to the fatalities, Reuters reported earlier this month, citing people familiar with the matter.
(Reporting by David French in New YorkEditing by Nick Zieminski)
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