Two Pennsylvania Measles Deaths Still Missing From CDC Count

Pennsylvania’s health department confirmed two measles-associated deaths on Aug. 25 and then refused to say who died, how old they were, or how measles figured in. Eight days later the national death count still shows none.

Gov. Josh Shapiro called the losses the first measles deaths in the state in 35 years. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asked in Tampa this week whether they “actually happened,” and the CDC has left both off its 2026 tally while it reviews the files.

Pennsylvania’s Thin Death Announcement

The Pennsylvania Department of Health confirmed two measles-associated deaths of unvaccinated Lancaster County residents and stopped there. State Health Secretary Dr. Debra Bogen said privacy law barred any detail that could identify the families. Pennsylvania had not recorded a measles-associated death since 1991.

“My deepest sympathies are with the loved ones who are facing this unimaginable loss,” Bogen said. She also said the MMR vaccine is safe and “provides the best protection we have against measles.” Shapiro, speaking later the same day at Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health’s Women and Babies Hospital, put it more sharply: illness and death from measles is “completely preventable.”

That was almost the entire public record. Reporters asked ages, towns, hospital names, and whether the dead were part of Lancaster’s large Plain communities. Officials would not answer. Shapiro warned against pinning the outbreak on one faith group, noting measles had already been traced across counties with very different makeups.

WHAT THE STATE WOULD NOT RELEASE

• Ages: Officials would not say whether the dead were infants, children, or adults.
• Place of death: They would not say which hospital, home, or county office handled each case.
• How measles figured: The phrase “measles-associated” was not defined in public as the immediate cause, a contributing cause, or a lab finding beside another injury.
• Community: Shapiro declined to say whether either person was Amish or Mennonite.

That thin file was a choice, and it met a county that already distrusted headlines. Lancaster County Commissioner Josh Parsons said a governor who calls a national press conference owes more than the headline, including demographic facts the law allows. He said asking those questions is not “pro-measles.”

Did Measles Kill the Lancaster Newborn?

Lancaster County Coroner Dr. Stephen Diamantoni said his office had handled “no measles deaths,” a sentence that moved faster than the state’s case files. He did describe one infant who tested positive for measles and died of a ruptured spleen. Measles antibodies showed up in postmortem testing. Diamantoni said the forensic pathologist felt adamantly that this was a traumatic rupture, not a measles death.

State officials had used careful language from the start. “Associated” can mean measles was found, not that it was proven as the blow that killed. Shapiro’s office later said the Department of Health was never told by the coroner that the infant’s death was not measles-associated, and spokeswoman Rosie Lapowsky said the governor stood “firmly” by the claim that “those two deaths were measles related.”

Relatives of a Lancaster newborn who tested positive have said they believe measles killed the child. Far less has been said in public about the second death, which has been described as a child. Both were unvaccinated Lancaster residents, according to the state. Diamantoni is the coroner for the county where they lived, but Lancaster has no local health department and depends on Harrisburg for outbreak files, so the two offices were not reading from the same page.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The state’s finding: Two unvaccinated Lancaster County residents died in measles-associated cases, the first such deaths in Pennsylvania since 1991.
• The clinic push: The outbreak that began in April had reached 393 confirmed cases by the day of the announcement.
• The federal pause: CDC’s public death line for 2026 remains a blank while it reviews cause.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• Immediate cause: Whether measles killed, contributed, or was present beside another injury in each case.
• The second file: Identity, age, and medical course of the second person, beyond unvaccinated and Lancaster.
• The national number: Whether either death will ever be added to CDC’s 2026 count.

Public-health communicators said this is the pattern that followed COVID: when officials argue over basic facts in public, people stop knowing whom to believe. Cynthia Baur, who studies health literacy at the University of Maryland, said disagreements like this do not help anyone who is supposed to be serving the public interest. Former Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who held Kennedy’s job in the Obama administration, called his decision to talk about school lunches and farming while measles cases rise “a very intentional refusal” to confront both the spread and the shot that stops it.

Kennedy Asked Whether the Deaths Happened

Minutes before Shapiro’s cameras rolled, the governor took a heated call from Kennedy. Shapiro said he declined an offer of federal staff and told the secretary that the administration’s rhetoric was having “real-life consequences” in Pennsylvania. He was late to his own press conference because of that call.

The next day Kennedy used his official account to accuse Shapiro of a “morose” rush to Lancaster and of recycling a “COVID playbook” of fear and finger-pointing. He wrote that the announcement “appears to have been premature, and the deaths may even have been altogether fabricated by one of the Governor’s hopeful staffers.” He said the Lancaster coroner had no record of measles deaths and that state law requires those deaths to be reported to the coroner.

The announcement appears to have been premature, and the deaths may even have been altogether fabricated by one of the Governor’s hopeful staffers.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., U.S. health secretary, on X

Governor Shapiro's unseemly rush to Lancaster County to convene a national press conference and his giddy delight in announcing two measles deaths was a morose commentary on the contemporary political dialogue. The performance was a replay of the Democrats' COVID playbook:… https://t.co/LvZf3br1dB

— Secretary Kennedy (@SecKennedy) August 26, 2026

Speaking with reporters in Tampa this week, where his public schedule was regenerative farming, childhood fitness, and school nutrition, Kennedy returned to the same doubt. “We’re trying to figure out whether, you know, who those deaths were and whether they actually happened,” he said. He added that the United States is “doing a better job than any country in the world at controlling the measles outbreak.”

He did not, in the remarks that circulated, offer condolences to the families. He did not tell unvaccinated people in outbreak counties to get MMR. He did say vaccination should be a personal choice and that school requirements are motivated by drug-company profits. He also suggested the measles vaccine contains fetal tissue. It does not. HHS did not answer, by one reporter’s deadline, a direct question on whether Kennedy recommends the MMR shot for people who are unvaccinated.

A county coroner’s “zero measles deaths” line is now doing national work it was never built to do. Once that sentence was public, the health secretary could treat two state-confirmed deaths as a riddle, and a large share of the online argument treated “died with measles” versus “died of measles” as if it closed the file. It did not. It froze it.

Zero Deaths on the CDC Tally

CDC’s measles page, updated Aug. 30 with counts as of Aug. 27, shows 2,903 confirmed U.S. cases in 2026 and a death cell that is not a number. The agency says this week’s update will not include the two measles-associated deaths reported by Pennsylvania on Aug. 25 “while CDC reviews additional information regarding the circumstances and causes of death.” Available information, the footnote says, “does not establish whether measles caused or contributed to the deaths or whether the individuals died from other causes while infected with measles.”

That is a harsher freeze than a routine delay. CDC also said the governor’s office had not provided information relevant to the outbreak and had declined offers of assistance. Shapiro said his health department is in regular communication with CDC. Both statements are now on the record, and the death column still reads as a blank.

MEASLES COUNTS AS OF LATE AUGUST

The 2,903 cases already sit 614 above the 2,289 logged in all of 2025, with four months left in the year. Ninety-four percent of this year’s cases are outbreak-associated. Only 16 of the 2,903 were in international visitors. Children and teens ages 5 to 19 account for 47% of cases; children under 5 account for 19%, and 11% of that youngest group have been hospitalized. Three percent of cases had two MMR doses. Three percent had one. The rest were unvaccinated or unknown.

Pennsylvania’s own caseload jumped from 393 on the morning of the death announcement to 443 on CDC’s map two days later. South Carolina (670) and Utah (526) still lead the country. The state’s hospitalization rate, nearly 20%, is more than double the national 8%, a gap that fits a county-level outbreak running through households with little prior immunity.

School MMR Rates Fell Below 95 Percent

Measles was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000. That status depends on high two-dose coverage, and the coverage line has been slipping for years. CDC says U.S. kindergarten MMR coverage fell from 95.2% in 2019-20 to 92.4% in 2025-26, below the 95% community-immunity target, leaving about 280,000 kindergartners unprotected this school year.

Pennsylvania’s own school survey is a little higher than the national figure and still patchy. For 2025-26, 93.2% of Pennsylvania kindergarten students, 94.6% of seventh graders, and 96.9% of twelfth graders had both required MMR doses. Local school figures discussed with the death announcement put Lancaster County kindergarten coverage at 87.6%, with seventh graders at 83.3%. State officials last year estimated that about 25% of Lancaster’s Amish community had received MMR. The Amish church has no ban on vaccines; uptake is a household decision, and it has been low enough for measles to move.

WHERE THE SHOTS STAND

• National kindergarten MMR: 92.4% in 2025-26, down from 95.2% before the COVID years.
• Pennsylvania kindergarten MMR: 93.2%, with many schools still under the 95% line.
• Lancaster kindergarten MMR: 87.6% in the figures cited as officials discussed the deaths.
• Two-dose protection: CDC finds two MMR doses 97% effective for measles with two doses; one dose is 93% effective.

Harrisburg has been running clinics even while the death fight swallowed the week. Since April the state has given 4,100 vaccinations at 91 pop-up clinics, with 40 more planned. In July more than 35,000 Pennsylvanians received MMR, 10,000 more doses than a typical month. More than 1,000 clinicians sat through measles briefings, because most practicing doctors have never treated a case. Nearly 1,000 school nurses got the same crash course as classrooms reopened. During the outbreak the state also told clinicians they could give MMR as early as 6 months, following American Academy of Pediatrics guidance, to cover babies who would otherwise wait until 12 to 15 months for dose one.

Death from measles is uncommon and not rare enough to shrug at. Pennsylvania’s health department puts the fatality range at one to three patients per 1,000 cases. The virus stays infectious in air and on surfaces for up to two hours. Symptoms can start 7 to 21 days after exposure. Nearly 20% of Pennsylvania’s cases have needed a hospital. Michael D. Barber, CEO of Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health, called the continued presence of measles “a sober reminder of why vaccination matters” for newborns, pregnant women, and patients already under care.

What the MMR Shot Contains

Kennedy’s fetal-tissue claim is the piece of this fight that will outlive any one death certificate, because it is aimed at the product parents are being asked to accept. MMR vaccines licensed in the United States are live, weakened measles, mumps, and rubella viruses. Merck’s M-M-R II and GSK’s Priorix are interchangeable for the recommended two-dose series. Dose one is due at 12 through 15 months; dose two at 4 through 6 years.

The rubella strain is grown in old laboratory cell lines, WI-38 or MRC-5, that started from fetal lung tissue in the 1960s. No new abortion is done to make today’s shots. After the virus is grown it is extracted and purified. The American Academy of Pediatrics says children are not injected with any part of a fetus, and that purification leaves no fetal tissue in the finished shot. Residual protein and DNA from the production cells can remain in trace amounts that regulators have reviewed for decades.

That manufacturing history is not a secret insert. It is also not “fetal tissue in the vaccine,” which is the phrase that keeps getting used as if a piece of a baby were in the vial. Parents who want a primary document can read the M-M-R II package insert: measles and mumps viruses grown in chick embryo cells, rubella in WI-38 human diploid lung fibroblasts, then a short list of stabilizers and a measured speck of neomycin. There is no preservative.

Sebelius said the job in a week like this is to put case numbers in front of people, sit with community groups, and ask unvaccinated families to get the shot, especially with classrooms filling. Kennedy’s public week was farming, fitness, and a question about whether two Pennsylvania deaths were real. Shapiro’s public week was a death announcement that withheld the facts most likely to quiet a coroner’s dissent. Parents got both performances and no single federal-state line.

Samoa’s 2019 Letters Return With This Outbreak

The same week the Pennsylvania deaths went missing from the national count, letters from Kennedy’s 2019 trip to Samoa came back through a records case. During his 2025 confirmation hearings he told senators the visit had “nothing to do with vaccines” and that he had gone to introduce a digital medical-records system. Newly released correspondence includes a Jan. 20, 2019, letter to then-Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi in which Kennedy proposed that his team study “what happened with your MMR vaccines.” He used the words “vaccine” or “vaccination” eight times. A measles outbreak later killed 83 people in Samoa, most of them children.

Democratic senators including Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Ron Wyden of Oregon said the letters show he lied to the Senate and called for him to be forced out. There is no sign President Trump intends to fire him. The Samoa file does not settle a Lancaster death certificate. It does show the same move now on display in Pennsylvania: treat official measles deaths as a claim to be investigated rather than a warning to vaccinate.

THE WEEK THE TALLY WENT BLANK

1. April 2026: Pennsylvania’s measles outbreak begins; pop-up MMR clinics follow.
2. July 2026: More than 35,000 MMR doses go into arms statewide, 10,000 above a typical month.
3. Aug. 25, 2026: The state confirms two measles-associated deaths in Lancaster County; Shapiro holds a hospital press conference after a heated call with Kennedy.
4. Aug. 26, 2026: Commissioner Parsons says the coroner has zero measles deaths; Kennedy writes that the fatalities may have been fabricated.
5. Aug. 27, 2026: CDC, as of this day’s count, has 2,903 U.S. cases and still lists no 2026 deaths; Samoa letters land in public view.
6. Aug. 30, 2026: CDC’s dashboard states it will not add the Pennsylvania deaths while it reviews cause.

As of Sept. 2, the first measles-associated deaths of 2026 remain a Pennsylvania finding, a coroner’s quarrel, and a blank cell in Washington. School is back. The clinics are still open. The national death count is still zero.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of public statements, agency data, and on-the-record comments. It is for information only and is not medical advice, a diagnosis, or a recommendation that any person receive or refuse the MMR vaccine. Decisions about vaccination, school immunization rules, pregnancy, infant exposure, and treatment after a possible measles contact belong with a licensed physician, pediatrician, or local health department who knows the patient’s history. Case counts, death classifications, and clinical guidance reflect the Pennsylvania Department of Health and CDC pages cited here as of Sept. 2, 2026, and those figures can change as CDC finishes its review of the two Lancaster County deaths.