Two Died of Measles in Pennsylvania. Officials Blame Vaccine Lies.
Pennsylvania's health department confirmed on Aug. 25, 2026, that two unvaccinated residents of Lancaster County had died of measles — the first measles deaths in the United States this year and the first in the state in 35 years. Public-health officials tie the outbreak to falling vaccination rates driven by vaccine misinformation that has spread on social media, and Gov. Josh Shapiro said the toll shows “there’s real-life consequences to spreading misinformation.”
Two unvaccinated people have died of measles in Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County, the state Department of Health announced on Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2026. They are the first measles-related deaths reported in the United States in 2026 and the first in Pennsylvania in 35 years, CNN and The Washington Post reported. Both people who died had not received the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, NBC News reported.
The first deaths in a record year
The deaths come as the United States records its worst year for measles in more than three decades. The country has logged more than 2,700 confirmed cases in 2026, the most in any year since 1991, CNN reported. Measles was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000, meaning it was no longer spreading continuously within the country; that status has frayed as outbreaks recur among unvaccinated communities.
Pennsylvania alone has confirmed nearly 400 measles cases across more than two dozen counties this year, with roughly half of them in Lancaster County, and none of the state’s cases have been in people who received both recommended doses of the vaccine, The Washington Post reported. Measles is among the most contagious diseases known to medicine, and the vaccine that prevents it has been in routine use for decades.
A county where fewer children are protected
The share of American children entering school with protection has been slipping. About 92.4 percent of kindergartners received the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine in the 2025–2026 school year, down from 95.2 percent in 2019–2020, before the coronavirus pandemic, ABC News reported, citing federal data. Public-health officials say coverage of roughly 95 percent is needed to keep measles from circulating, a threshold the recent figures have fallen below.
That erosion of confidence has tracked a rise in unverified or untrue claims about measles and vaccines spreading online and on social media, according to ABC News. Such content ranges from exaggerated warnings about side effects to false assertions that the shots are more dangerous than the disease they prevent — claims that public-health authorities say are contradicted by decades of safety data.
A blunt call to Washington
Speaking in Lancaster after the deaths were confirmed, Gov. Josh Shapiro said he had taken a call from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of Health and Human Services and a longtime critic of vaccines, who offered additional federal support for the state’s response. Shapiro said he had been “blunt” in telling Kennedy that the administration’s “actions and…rhetoric” were “having a negative impact on communities across America and particularly right here in Pennsylvania,” NBC News reported.
“There’s real-life consequences to spreading misinformation,” Shapiro said, according to NBC News. State leaders say vaccine misinformation and distrust of scientific evidence on the safety and effectiveness of vaccines are driving waning immunization rates, leaving communities vulnerable to outbreaks, CNN reported.
When a lie leaves a body
Researchers who study health misinformation describe a familiar sequence: false or distorted claims about vaccines travel faster and further on engagement-driven feeds than the corrections that follow, seeding doubt that translates into missed appointments and unprotected children. When enough families in a community skip the shot, a single imported case can ignite an outbreak among the unvaccinated, as ABC News reported of this year’s clusters.
The two Lancaster County deaths convert an abstract argument about online falsehoods into a measurable cost. A disease the country once considered beaten has now killed two people in a year already marked by the most measles cases in more than three decades, The Washington Post reported — an outcome public officials have linked directly to the spread of vaccine misinformation.