Pennsylvania Measles Cases Surpass 1,000, with Cases Confirmed in 39 Counties

The US state of Pennsylvania has confirmed more than 1,000 measles cases in 2026, spread across 39 of its 67 counties, the state Department of Health announced on Monday, Oct. 5.

The department counted 1,004 cases.

Of those, 198 patients, nearly one in five, have been admitted to hospital, and five deaths are linked to measles.

More than 60 times last year

Axios reported on July 28 that the state recorded 16 cases in all of 2025, so this year's total is more than 60 times as many.

Axios also reported that the most the state had recorded in a single year for at least 25 years was 17, in 2019, according to the state health department.

Five deaths

The department confirmed the first two measles-associated deaths on Aug. 25.

Both people were unvaccinated residents of Lancaster County, a mostly rural county in the southeast of the state, and the department said they were the first measles-related deaths in Pennsylvania in 35 years.

ABC News reported on Sept. 28 that all four deaths announced by then were in people who had not received the measles vaccine.

Two were infants too young to have had the MMR vaccine, which protects against measles, mumps and rubella, and two were unvaccinated adults, aged 18 and 40.

Fox 29 reported that the fifth death, announced on Sept. 30, was also an unvaccinated Lancaster County resident.

The health department says measles kills one to three of every 1,000 people who catch it.

Health Secretary Debra Bogen said on Aug. 25 that many people in the state did not know how serious the disease can be, because it had been largely absent for more than three decades.

A county at the centre

The state says the outbreak began in late April.

ABC News reported that Lancaster County had 391 confirmed cases as of Oct. 5, the most of any county.

The Inquirer reported on Sept. 28 that the outbreak had spread from rural Lancaster communities into Philadelphia's suburbs, with cases also in Mifflin County, in central Pennsylvania.

The state count stood at 903 on Sept. 28, ABC News reported, so about 100 cases were added in a week.

The department counted 27 of them between Oct. 2 and Oct. 5.

The vaccine and the count

Four of the 1,004 cases were in people who had been vaccinated, less than 1% of the total, the department said.

The CDC, the US national public health agency, says two doses of the MMR vaccine are 97% effective at preventing measles.

Vaccinations across the state have jumped.

The department said more than 53,000 MMR doses were given in September, more than twice the roughly 25,000 in a typical month.

Beyond Pennsylvania

The CDC counted 3,887 confirmed measles cases in the United States as of Oct. 1, more than the 2,289 recorded in all of 2025.

The CDC, which updated its page on Oct. 2, lists two measles deaths nationally this year.

It says that number may change as reviews are completed, and that it is working with state epidemiologists on a standard definition for measles deaths.

Pennsylvania's health department reports five measles-associated deaths.

The state department said its daily numbers fluctuate and that the count covers confirmed cases only.