Pennsylvania has reported its fifth measles-associated death of 2026 as the state's ongoing outbreak climbs to 943 confirmed cases across 39 counties.
The Pennsylvania department of health said on Wednesday that an unvaccinated Lancaster county resident who tested positive for measles had died. Health officials did not release further information about the individual, citing privacy protections.
The death marks the fifth Pennsylvania resident to meet the state's definition of a measles-associated death this year after a fourth death two weeks ago. Due to how the Trump administration has changed its method for reporting measles deaths, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has not counted the Pennsylvania measles deaths in its national tally.
As of Monday 28 September, Pennsylvania had recorded 40 new positive cases. The outbreak has now reached 39 counties, with 943 ******* ulative confirmed cases, 176 hospitalizations and five confirmed measles-associated deaths.
Only four of those confirmed cases have involved vaccinated individuals, representing less than 1% of the state's total cases.

#associated

A 40-year-old Pennsylvania woman who died with what appears to be measles-related complications also had ongoing lung problems, including asthma and COPD, according to the coroner's office who handled the case. It would be the third measles-related death in Pennsylvania amid a surging outbreak of the virus. 693 cases had been confirmed so far this year in the state, with 99 in the last week alone. NBC News' Erika Edwards reports.

#erika

By David French
NEW YORK, Sept 13 (Reuters) - The death toll in Pennsylvania's measles outbreak rose this weekend with a county coroner's ‌report of a woman's death from complications related to the ‌disease.
The coroner's office of western Pennsylvania's Jefferson County reported that a 40-year-old woman died on Saturday from complications ******* ociated with measles. The commonwealth has seen an outbreak of the highly-infectious disease, adding to a resurgence of measles in the United States as official data shows declining U.S. vaccination rates.
The coroner's office said it ‌was working with the Pennsylvania ⁠Department of Health.
"This is a heartbreaking loss for the family and an unfortunate reminder that measles can be a ⁠serious and potentially life-threatening disease," Coroner Greg Furlong said in a statement posted on Facebook.

#county #outbreak #office

By Yasmeen Abutaleb and Dan Levine
WASHINGTON, Sept 3 (Reuters) - U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asked his new CDC director to remove a reference to two Pennsylvania deaths from the agency's online measles tally after he questioned whether the disease contributed to the fatalities, three sources familiar with the situation said.
Kennedy's request came after CDC staffers had already ‌accepted the state's characterization of the deaths as linked to measles, a Pennsylvania official said.
Despite that, Erica Schwartz, the recently appointed director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ‌agreed with Kennedy's directive and implemented it without objection, said the three sources familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The move followed a heated exchange on social media between Kennedy, a long-time anti-vaccine activist appointed by President Donald Trump, and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat. The two officials accused each other of politicizing the outbreak in Pennsylvania, the latest state to grapple with a resurgence of measles since the Trump administration took office.

#pennsylvania #measles #three #familiar

One of the two people who recently died of measles in Pennsylvania was an infant, the state Health Department said. The department announced that two unvaccinated residents had died of measles, the first measles-related deaths in the U.S. this year and the first in Pennsylvania in 35 years. NBC News' Erika Edwards reports.

#department #erika

WASHINGTON (AP) — Public health experts have been quick to condemn an executive order from President Donald Trump aimed at upending childhood vaccinations in the U.S., but the biggest obstacles may be the unprecedented financial and logistical challenges it would impose on parents, health providers and drugmakers.
Monday's announcement by the Republican president calls for separating combination shots — including the measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine — into separate injections. Appointments for that and other vaccinations should be ****** ed out whenever possible, the order states.
To accomplish that, drugmakers would need to revive a slate of individual vaccines that have not been widely used in the U.S. for decades. They would also have to build new manufacturing plants capable of producing millions more vaccine doses than the nation currently uses.
For parents, unbundling the MMR vaccine and ****** ing out the shots would mean returning to the doctor's office many more times than is currently needed. Those appointments could also strain pediatricians who typically administer the shots, while driving up costs tied to syringes and other medical supplies.
Studies in the U.S. and other countries have shown that combination vaccines increase the likelihood that children will be fully protected from infectious diseases before starting school.

#shots #Health #order #vaccinations

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Sunday that parents should get their children vaccinated against measles, as the United States records its highest number of cases in 35 years.
Speaking on CNN's "State of the Union," Kennedy was asked by host Dana Bash, with the school year approaching, whether he would tell parents who have not vaccinated their children that they should do so because the vaccine is safe.
"We tell people ... that parents should get their children vaccinated for measles," Kennedy said. "A measles vaccine is effective. It stops measles in about 97% of the cases. People should get vaccinated."
Kennedy also said, "I've never questioned the efficacy of the MMR vaccine."
Kennedy is a longtime critic of vaccine policy who founded Children's Health Defense, an anti-vaccine advocacy group. He has generally acknowledged that the MMR vaccine prevents measles but has repeatedly raised concerns about vaccine safety and has said the decision to vaccinate should be a personal one.

#vaccine

As measles roars back, scientists find antibodies that could offer protection

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Using the blood of a 56-year-old woman vaccinated against measles, scientists have isolated a fighting force of four potent virus-blocking antibodies that could pave the way toward a treatment for people exposed to the highly contagious respiratory disease making a comeback in the United States.
A safe, highly effective vaccine for measles has been available since the 1960s, and the U.S. officially eliminated the disease in 2000, with sporadic cases and outbreaks. But dropping vaccination rates have sparked large outbreaks in multiple states, and the country is edging closer to the virus spreading freely again-which puts more people at risk.
New ways to block or treat measles would be particularly important for people who are immunocompromised and babies under the age of 1, because they are not eligible for the vaccine, leaving them unprotected amid a growing number of cases.
“Measles was a problem that was solved. Until it wasn’t solved anymore,” said Erica Ollmann Saphire, president of the La Jolla Institute for Immunology who led the study published Thursday in the journal Cell Host & Microbe. But she and other scientists stressed that this approach was not a substitute for a vaccine.

https://www.yahoo.com/news...

In the late 1990s, a theory gripped parents around the world: What if childhood vaccines — particularly the combined measles-mumps-rubella vaccine — cause autism? Nearly three decades later, the debunked theory has gained renewed prominence in parallel with the rise of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a long-time anti-vaccine activist who now serves as the US health secretary.
Scientists, medical providers and medical researchers are clear on this: Vaccines do not cause autism.
To those tuning into the vaccine debate now, it can feel like scientists are dismissing the theory without considering it. Bu