Two people in Pennsylvania who have contracted measles have died, marking the first U.S. deaths this year related to the vaccine-preventable illness as well as the state’s first in 35 years.
The Pennsylvania Department of Health confirmed the measles-associated deaths Tuesday. The department did not disclose their names, ages or other potentially identifying information, but said that both were unvaccinated and lived in the state’s Lancaster County.
Pennsylvania is among the states that have been facing outbreaks of the disease this year. Its health department noted in the Tuesday statement that it has confirmed 393 cases across 28 counties in 2026—the third-highest tally nationwide behind South Carolina’s 670 and Utah’s 526, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Department of Health urged the public to report any potential measles exposure, and warned that the disease’s early symptoms can appear similar to other respiratory viral infections. Chiefly, the department stressed that the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine is safe and provides 97% lifetime protection after two doses.
“Because measles was largely eliminated in the Commonwealth for more than three decades, people are not familiar with this disease and don’t fully understand the potential severity of the illness,” Pennsylvania Secretary of Health Debra Bogen, M.D., said in Tuesday’s statement. “We want to ensure every Pennsylvanian has the information they need to protect themselves, their loved ones and their communities. As a physician, I want to make sure that people understand that the MMR vaccine is safe and provides the best protection we have against measles.”
There have been 2,777 cases of measles reported to the CDC this year, up from 2025’s 2,289 and the highest single-year total since the early 1990s.
The incline has come alongside a decline in reported vaccination. This past week, for instance, the CDC reported that national vaccination coverage among kindergartners was 92.4% for the 2025-2026 school year, as opposed to 95.2% during the 2019-2020 school year. Experts generally point to 95% coverage as the bar for herd immunity, a goal that only 11 states met during the most recent school year. The public health agency’s data also showed a jump in non-medical exemptions among students, from 1.9% of kindergartners in 2020-2021 to 4% in 2025-2026.
Public health and medical groups have broadly laid blame for both trends on Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is affiliated with anti-vaccine groups and has publicly voiced skepticism about whether many long-recommended vaccines are safe—including in Pennsylvania.
Though the secretary, when pressed, has advised those facing outbreaks in their communities to seek a vaccine, his critics have described the endorsements as lukewarm and pointed to other actions the department has taken under his leadership to weaken confidence in vaccines and pare down the childhood vaccine schedule.
Among the most recent updates in this area came earlier this month when President Donald Trump signed an executive order that called for reducing the number of childhood vaccines recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from 17 to 11, and also directed HHS to explore offering MMR inoculation as individual shots rather than as a combined vaccine. The changes were panned by major medical and infectious disease groups, some of which have been maintaining their own recommendations independent from those of health officials.
Following that executive order, HHS opened a Request for Information this week on how it may adjust its childhood vaccine recommendations and whether there should be a new way to categorize those shots by benefit, risk and available evidence.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, in a statement on the Pennsylvania deaths, encouraged parents and caregivers to speak with a pediatrician about MMR vaccination, which it recommends starting at one year of age and as young as six months for those living or traveling to areas with an active outbreak. The group also noted that community-wide herd immunity effectively extends protection to those too young to be vaccinated.
“In 2026, decades after measles was eliminated in the United States, it is heartbreaking to witness deaths from a disease that is preventable with a vaccine that has been widely used since the 1970s,” Andrew Racine, M.D., Ph.D., president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said in the statement. “Today, pediatricians call on our leaders to encourage MMR vaccination to stop the spread of measles in our communities. Let us return to a time when measles was a disease pediatricians only saw in their textbooks, not in their exam rooms.”