Pennsylvania infant measles death confirmed by Lancaster County coroner
A Lancaster County coroner said measles caused a 6-week-old girl’s death, clarifying one part of a dispute over two reported deaths.
By Maya Lindqvist · Senior Technology Correspondent
3 min read
A Pennsylvania infant measles death has been confirmed by Lancaster County Coroner Stephen Diamantoni, who said a 6-week-old Amish girl died of measles at home in August. The finding adds a clear cause-of-death determination to a public dispute over two measles-associated deaths Pennsylvania announced on Aug. 25.
Diamantoni told local media that the girl had Amish lethal microcephaly, a genetic condition for which she had received care, but said measles was the cause of her death. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the child had been receiving palliative care and was not expected to survive much beyond six months because of the condition.
Was the 6-week-old’s death one of Pennsylvania’s two reported measles deaths?
That has not been directly confirmed. Diamantoni said he did not know whether the girl was the second person included in the state’s Aug. 25 announcement, according to the Inquirer. The Pennsylvania Department of Health said it knew of the information the coroner shared and had no new measles-related deaths to announce that day.
Gov. Josh Shapiro’s social-media post referring to the coroner’s finding appeared to indicate that the case was among the two deaths the state had already reported, Politico said. But the health department had not immediately confirmed that link.
Pennsylvania described the two Aug. 25 fatalities as “measles-associated” deaths. That is an outbreak-surveillance category: the state counts deaths in which evidence of measles is present, including cases where a coroner does not identify measles as the immediate cause, according to PBS NewsHour’s PolitiFact report.
A coroner, by contrast, determines the chain of events in a specific death and may separately identify direct causes and contributing medical conditions. An infectious-disease specialist told PolitiFact that those different descriptions are not necessarily in conflict.
What happened in the separate newborn case?
The other reported death involved a newborn Amish boy who had measles. Diamantoni said the baby died from a ruptured or lacerated spleen and that measles did not contribute, while Pennsylvania still classified the death as measles-associated, according to the Inquirer and Ars Technica.
Both infants were too young to receive a measles vaccine, which is typically administered at age 1, Politico reported. Pennsylvania said both people included in its Aug. 25 announcement were Lancaster County residents and were unvaccinated.
The cases became politically charged after Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. publicly suggested that the reported deaths might have been fabricated, according to Politico and PBS NewsHour. The coroner’s finding in the 6-week-old girl’s case came after those remarks; it does not resolve the separate dispute over the newborn’s cause of death.
As of Sept. 4, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s public measles dashboard was not counting the Pennsylvania deaths as measles deaths, citing conflicting state and local accounts, Politico reported. Ars Technica reported that the page had been updated to say the National Center for Health Statistics did not yet have 2026 death records listing measles as the underlying cause.
This story draws on original reporting from Ars Technica.