A 40-year-old woman from Jefferson County, Pennsylvania, died from complications associated with measles, the local coroner’s office said.
The woman died on Saturday, Jefferson County Coroner Greg Furlong said in a news release, which added that no additional identifying information would be made available, citing the privacy of the family. Reached by phone briefly Sunday morning, Furlong, who was elected coroner as a Republican, said the woman was unvaccinated.
The coroner’s office is working with the Pennsylvania Department of Health in the case, according to the news release.
“Many people associate measles with a childhood illness, but it can lead to severe complications in individuals of any age,” Jefferson County Chief Deputy Coroner and Public Relations Officer Jason Stiver said in a statement.
This comes as the state has been in the middle of a political firestorm over measles and as Pennsylvania’s cases of the highly contagious disease are climbing. As of Friday, at least 676 people in the state had contracted measles this year, including 108 new cases reported in the last week, according to the latest data from the state health department.
Last month, the state health department announced two measles-associated deathsin Lancaster County. The cases were quickly thrust into the public spotlight and ignited a feud between Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Shapiro accused Kennedy, the founder of a prominent anti-vaccine group, of sowing confusion about vaccines and contributing to the return of the disease that had been declared eliminated in 2000.
Kennedy has contended Shapiro, who is widely expected to run for president, of using the moment for political gain. He had cast doubt on measles as the cause of the deaths for two Lancaster County residents, suggesting that they “may even have been altogether fabricated.”
Lancaster County Coroner Stephen Diamantoni has said that the pathologist who performed the autopsy determined the primary cause of death for one child who tested positive for measles was a spleen laceration hours after birth on Aug. 14. The pathologist did not believe the virus played a role in that baby’s death, said Diamantoni, a family doctor first elected coroner, as a Republican, in 2007.
Measles can cause inflammation to the spleen, making it more susceptible to life-threatening rupture, the state health department has said.
In the second case, Diamantoni said that an infant from the Amish community died of measles. The six-week-old died Aug. 18 at home after being in palliative care at home soon after birth. The infant was born with Amish lethal microcephaly, a rare genetic condition that is not generally found outside the Amish community.
State health officials have said that “measles-associated” deaths refer to the virus being present, even if the disease is not identified as the immediate cause of death. They have not released more information about the cases, which they have said were the first such deaths in the state in 35 years and the first reported in the country this year.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has excluded from its weekly updates of a national measles death tally the two deaths that state officials reported. The highly unusual decision — which departs from the agency’s practice of including such data from state health departments — came from new CDC Director Erica Schwartz, The Washington Post previously reported.
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