Pennsylvania’s Department of Health on Wednesday, Nov. 4, reported the state’s sixth measles-associated death of the year. An unvaccinated resident of Jefferson County “tested positive for measles and has died,” the department said in a news release. The department reported the death to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and added it to its public measles dashboard, the release said. Citing privacy, it released no age or other details: “To protect the privacy of the individual and their family, DOH will not release any additional details that could personally identify them,” the release said, adding that “families deserve the dignity to mourn in private.” FOX56, WFMZ, ABC News and Reuters carried the announcement Wednesday afternoon Eastern time.

The same release updated the statewide count. Pennsylvania has confirmed 1,467 measles cases across 45 counties so far in 2026, according to the department. Citing state figures, FOX56 reported 34 new cases since the department’s Nov. 2 update and 283 hospitalizations so far this year, and said five cases involved vaccinated people, less than 1% of the total; WFMZ and the Reading Eagle also listed 283 hospitalizations. Its Nov. 2 update had listed 1,433 cases in 44 counties, 269 hospitalizations and five confirmed deaths. LancasterOnline reported that the department added Butler County to the list, bringing the count to 45 of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties, and that the outbreak has now run into its eighth month.

The department breaks down the six deaths by county of residence: two in Jefferson, three in Lancaster and one in Mifflin, per the release. A seventh reported death remains outside the official tally. “DOH is aware of a reported death of a Franklin County resident in October,” the release said. “However, as of November 4, DOH’s thorough investigation has not yet found any Franklin County cases meeting the required criteria to be confirmed as a measles-associated death.” The department said it “appreciates that the Franklin County coroner made DOH and the public aware of this case” and keeps working with coroners “to improve communications and refine death reporting standards during the ongoing measles outbreak.”

Under the department’s definition, a death counts as measles-associated only when it meets several criteria. The release lists them: “Death must occur within 30 days of symptom onset in an individual with clinical evidence of a measles infection and a positive laboratory test,” and the death “must not be due to unrelated causes (e.g., motor vehicle accident).” Whether a person “was exposed to a confirmed measles case prior to death or supporting medical records” also gets considered, the department said. LancasterOnline quoted the same criteria.

Lancaster County, home to the largest Amish population in the United States, remains the center of the outbreak. LancasterOnline put the county’s year-to-date total at 504 cases, while the Reading Eagle, citing the department’s dashboard, listed 496 for Lancaster; this desk could not reconcile the two figures and reports both. The Reading Eagle also listed 94 cases in Chester County, 22 in Lebanon County and seven each in Berks and Schuylkill counties.

Watch: measles coverage from Lancaster County and New York, posted on X

This desk viewed each clip’s preview frame, not every frame, before embedding. If an embed does not load, it shows as a plain link to the original post.

@AP (The Associated Press) on X, Oct. 30, 5:00 a.m. PT: a roughly 81-second vertical video on the outbreak in Pennsylvania’s Amish country and what the post calls “renewed openness to vaccines”; it predates the Nov. 4 death · Credit: @AP · original post
@NewsHour (PBS News) on X, Nov. 4, 11:47 a.m. PT: a roughly 79-second video on the New York child’s death, which the post says marks the state’s first such fatality in more than 30 years · Credit: @NewsHour · original post

National figures lag the state’s and count deaths differently. Reuters reported that the CDC listed 4,852 confirmed cases nationwide as of Oct. 29 and has recorded three measles-related deaths this year without naming the states. According to Reuters, the gap follows a policy shift under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., with the CDC “switching to the National Center for Health Statistics’ mortality data to track measles deaths, replacing its earlier reliance on state health departments’ figures.” ABC News counted seven measles-associated deaths nationally this year, six in Pennsylvania and one in New York, and described the national case total as the highest since 1991. The Department of Health and Human Services and the Pennsylvania department “did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment,” the wire service said.

The Pennsylvania death came two days after New York reported its first measles-associated death in 30 years. The New York State Department of Health said on Monday that a child in Lewis County had died, Fierce Healthcare reported, and New York had counted 210 cases this year as of Nov. 3. In a post on X, PBS News described the child as an unvaccinated 7-month-old. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul called it “a devastating reminder of what’s at stake when Washington deliberately erodes decades of progress in protecting Americans from preventable illnesses,” according to Fierce Healthcare. HHS, in a statement quoted by the same outlet, said: “Secretary Kennedy and CDC Director Dr. Erica Schwartz continue to make clear that the MMR vaccine is the most effective way to prevent measles.”

A deadline on the country’s status also looms. The Pan American Health Organization’s expert commission “is expected to decide next week whether the United States still meets the criteria for measles elimination, a status it has held since 2000,” Reuters reported.

Demand for vaccines has surged in Pennsylvania. Health care providers there typically give about 25,000 doses of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine a month; in September and October “more than 56,000 and 61,000 doses were administered, respectively,” the department said. State health center staff have given more than 6,800 MMR shots at 241 pop-up clinics in affected communities since the outbreak began in late April, and department nurses have given more than 10,900 doses this year, the release said. The department recommends an “early zero dose” for infants aged 6 through 11 months who live in or travel to counties flagged for sustained community transmission, on top of the two routine doses.

Vaccination gaps predate the outbreak. Pennsylvania’s kindergarten MMR rate fell to 93.2% last year, the Associated Press reported in a story published by the Los Angeles Times, and Lancaster County’s stands at 88%, according to an AP review of state data; nationally, 92.4% of kindergarteners in 2025-26 received the required MMR shots, down from 95.2% in 2019-20, per CDC figures cited by the AP. That AP report, published Nov. 4 before the state’s update, still used older counts of “over 1,350” cases and five deaths. “The overwhelming reason had nothing to do with being against vaccinations,” Allen Hoover, an Old Order Mennonite and former administrator of the Parochial Medical Center in the town of New Holland, said, according to the AP. “It was simply, ‘Well, we never did before, and we came through all right.’”

The department describes measles as highly contagious, with nearly 20% of people it has identified with the disease ending up in the hospital, and says that death, “though rare, occurs in one to three patients per 1,000 cases,” per the release. People who think they have had an exposure and have symptoms should contact a health care provider or call the department’s hotline at 877-PA-HEALTH (877-724-3258), it said.