A 40-year-old Pennsylvania woman has died from measles-related complications, marking the state’s third death linked to the virus this year.
Jefferson County Coroner Greg Furlong announced the death in a Facebook post, saying the woman died Saturday and describing the case as “measles-related.”
Officials did not release the woman’s name. She was identified only as a resident of Jefferson County, a rural region roughly 50 miles (80 kilometers) northeast of Pittsburgh.
“This is a heartbreaking loss for the family and an unfortunate reminder that measles can be a serious and potentially life-threatening disease,” Furlong wrote.
The coroner did not disclose whether the woman had been vaccinated. His post said no additional details about the case would be made public.
Pennsylvania’s two earlier measles-related deaths this year involved infants. Both deaths occurred in August, although a coroner determined that measles directly caused only one of them.
One of the infants, a boy, died soon after birth from a ruptured spleen. Lancaster County Coroner Dr. Stephen Diamantoni said the infant had measles, but the infection did not cause the rupture.
Instead, measles was recorded as a “significant condition” at the time of the boy’s death.
The second infant, a 6-week-old girl with a genetic disorder that made her especially vulnerable to infection, died from measles, Diamantoni told The Associated Press.
The girl had Amish lethal microcephaly, a condition marked by an unusually small head and an underdeveloped brain. Children born with the disorder generally live six months or less.
Because the first measles vaccine dose is normally administered at about 1 year of age, neither infant was old enough to receive the routine vaccination.
Pennsylvania had recorded 676 measles cases across 37 of its 67 counties as of Friday, according to the state Department of Health. The outbreak had led to 124 hospitalizations, while four of the reported cases involved people who had been vaccinated against measles.
The three measles-related deaths reported by state and local officials as of Sunday did not square with figures of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which showed no such deaths this year.
“The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) does not currently have any death records from 2026 that indicate measles is the underlying cause,” read the CDC website Sunday.
Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, and Republican President Donald Trump’s administration have clashed over details of the two previous deaths in the state.
