{"id":305342,"date":"2026-10-12T22:50:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-12T22:50:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/305342\/"},"modified":"2026-10-12T22:50:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T22:50:12","slug":"pennsylvania-reports-its-6th-measles-death-in-a-franklin-county-resident","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/305342\/","title":{"rendered":"Pennsylvania reports its 6th measles death, in a Franklin County resident"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, Franklin County, Pennsylvania health officials announced the state\u2019s sixth measles-associated death in a 39-year-old woman who was unvaccinated against the virus. The woman also had multiple underlying health conditions, including a previous measles infection that was treated, the county coroner said.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the first death in Franklin County in many years with a patient with a recent history of a measles diagnosis and meets the definition set forth by the Pennsylvania Department of Health for a measles-associated death,\u201d the coroner\u2019s office said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for Franklin County told NBC news the \u201cprimary cause of death was a probable acute cardiac event due to possible complications of the measles.\u201d In Pennsylvania, a death is \u201cmeasles-associated\u201d if it occurred within 30 days of symptom onset and there is both clinical evidence and a positive laboratory test for measles.<\/p>\n

This is the first death in Franklin County in many years with a patient with a recent history of a measles diagnosis.<\/p>\n

So far this year, the state has reported five measles deaths,\u00a0including those of two infants<\/a>; a 20-year-old woman with leukemia who was undergoing chemotherapy; a 40-year-old woman with asthma and\u00a0chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; and an 18-year-old who\u00a0developed disseminated encephalomyelitis, a rare neurologic complication of measles.<\/p>\n

Three deaths have occurred in Lancaster County, including the infant deaths, and Mifflin County and Jefferson County have each reported a fatal infection.\u00a0<\/p>\n

CDC still notes only 2 measles deaths\u00a0<\/p>\n

The United States is seeing a historic resurgence of measles, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reporting 4,080 cases<\/a> so far this year, the most measles cases since 1991.<\/p>\n

Pennsylvania has the most measles cases in the country, with 1,136 cases, including 157 reported in the past 7 days. One-third of the state\u2019s cases have occurred in adults. A total of 219 people have been hospitalized, for a hospitalization rate of roughly 19%. As of this afternoon, the state\u2019s measles website still reflects only five deaths.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

The CDC <\/a>notes only two deaths this year from measles and is said to be working with the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) to develop a standardized case definition for death due to measles. Neither the CSTE<\/a> nor the CDC responded today to CIDRAP News\u2019 request for comment on the progress of standardizing case definitions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The CDC\u2019s dashboard shows that 40% of measles cases this year are in adults, but in Pennsylvania<\/a> adults make up 67% of measles cases. Adults nationwide have a 14% hospitalization rate, compared with 5% for kids aged 5 to 10.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Today, Franklin County, Pennsylvania health officials announced the state\u2019s sixth measles-associated death in a 39-year-old woman who was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":305343,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-305342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}