A local coroner has said that an infant from the Amish community in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, has died of measles.
County coroner Stephen Diamantoni shared the finding Friday after state officials last month announced that two people with measles infections had died. This is the first time the county coroner has confirmed that a child died because of measles in this outbreak.
“The child contracted measles, and measles caused the death of the child,” Diamantoni said in an interview.
The 6-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, he said. Most babies with that condition live only four to six months, he said.
“They often die of respiratory illness, and as a result of respiratory illness and low oxygen as a result of the measles infection, having Amish lethal microcephaly made the child very susceptible to severe illness and death,” said Diamantoni, a family doctor first elected coroner, as a Republican, in 2007.
The coroner said he did not know if this death is one of the two that state health officials reported last week. He said the information came from an investigation by the coroner’s office. Lancaster Online first reported that the infant died of measles.
The new details of the death on Friday come after the death of a different child who tested positive for measles, the coroner said. The coroner said the pathologist who performed the autopsy determined the primary cause of that child’s death was a spleen laceration hours after birth on Aug. 14.
The coroner said the pathologist did not believe the virus played a role in that baby’s death.
In a statement, the Pennsylvania Department of Health suggested that both deaths were the ones state health officials announced last week.
“The Lancaster County Coroner has now publicly confirmed a second infant death involving measles,” the department said. “There are no new measles-associated deaths to report at this time.”
The cases have attracted extraordinary national attention and ignited a bitter fight between Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Kennedy, the founder of a prominent anti-vaccine group, has cast doubt on measles as the cause of the deaths for two Lancaster County residents, suggesting that they “may even have been altogether fabricated.”
State health officials say “measles-associated” deaths refer to the virus being present, even if the disease is not identified as the immediate cause of death, but they did not release further details about the cases. The Pennsylvania Department of Health said they were the first such deaths in the state in 35 years, as well as the first reported in the country this year. The department has declined to release other information about the deaths citing an effort to protect patient privacy.
Shapiro, in a Friday post on X, linked to a local media story about the coroner’s latest findings, and lashed out at Kennedy.
After the department reported the first measles-associated deaths in 35 years, Shapiro wrote, Kennedy did not listen to “the real doctors and public health experts” and directed “the CDC not to acknowledge these deaths, and even accuse[d] me of fabricating these tragedies.”
He called on Kennedy to “stop playing games with people’s lives, report these deaths accurately on the CDC dashboard, and heed the guidance of actual medical experts.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has excluded from its weekly updates of a national measles death tally two deaths that state officials reported last week. The highly unusual decision came from new CDC Director Erica Schwartz, The Washington Post previously reported.
The move runs counter to the agency’s typical practice of including such data from state health departments, which are charged with making those determinations. Some former agency staffers and public health experts expressed concerns about the decision, saying it raises questions about political interference into public health data.
HHS did not respond to a request for comment. But on Friday, Kennedy wrote on social media that “the facts emerging now demonstrate why CDC waited for the evidence rather than allowing political grandstanding to dictate its reporting.” The county coroner has now publicly stated that measles caused “only the second infant’s death” and also pointed to the rare genetic condition the child had.
“The National Center for Health Statistics does not currently have any death records from 2026 that indicate measles is the underlying cause but will update as it receives and reviews submitted records. CDC will continue to update its reporting as additional information becomes available and relevant reviews are completed,” Kennedy wrote on X.
The CDC’s weekly update, posted on Fridays, has a note explaining why there is an asterisk in the column where measles deaths are reported for this year. It reiterates Kennedy’s statement about the National Center for Health Statistics. The note also adds: “CDC is also working with the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) to develop a standardized case definition for deaths due to measles. This work is intended to promote consistent classification and reporting of measles deaths across jurisdictions.”
Records sent to the National Center for Health Statistics can take weeks to arrive, according to a former CDC official familiar with the system, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. In addition, for investigating and controlling infectious-disease outbreaks, CDC needs to rely on information that states provide in real time, some of which does not appear on death records, the person said. “Case investigations would be delayed and incomplete if they relied solely on death records,” the person said.
The confirmation from the coroner that one baby died of measles sets up a major test for Schwartz, who has pledged to “never betray the science.”
Deb Houry, a former chief medical officer at the agency, said in reaction to the latest news: “It is clear from the news reports that both infants tragically contracted measles. These are notifiable infectious disease cases and Pennsylvania has followed the appropriate protocol and notified CDC when they first confirmed measles.”
Earlier in the week, the agency’s note had said the weekly update would not include the two measles-associated deaths reported by Pennsylvania’s health department, “while CDC reviews additional information regarding the circumstances and causes of death.”
The previous note added: “At this time, available information does not establish whether measles caused or contributed to the deaths or whether the individuals died from other causes while infected with measles. CDC will update the national count as additional information becomes available.”
Pennsylvania has the largest ongoing outbreak of measles in the country. As of Friday, at least 577 had contracted measles in the state since its outbreak began in late April. This year, the United States has recorded its highest number of measles cases in 35 years, with 3,134 cases as of Thursday, with months of 2026 left to go.
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