Pennsylvania, already dealing with the nation’s worst measles outbreak, has recorded its sixth death from the disease this year. The Franklin County coroner’s office posted on Facebook that the patient was a 39-year-old local woman who had been diagnosed with measles, the Washington Post reports. She had underlying health conditions and a “past diagnosis of measles with treatment,” the post said, adding that the case meets the Pennsylvania Health Department’s criteria for a measles-associated death. She died Saturday. The county coroner is Jordan Conner, a Republican.
Pennsylvania has recorded 1,136 cases of the measles this year, 157 of which have been reported in the past seven days, per CBS News. The state’s outbreak is the first in the US to exceed 1,000 cases in 35 years. The state’s data suggest to infectious-disease experts that the outbreak is considerably larger than the reported total, per the Post. Pennsylvania is the only state to reports deaths in 2026. The US surge in measles cases has coincided with a decline in vaccination rates.