Coroner confirms six-week-old Pennsylvania girl died from measles

A six-week-old girl in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, died from measles, county coroner Stephen Diamantoni confirmed to Lancaster Online. He said she died at home, likely on August 18.

The girl also had Amish lethal microcephaly, a genetic condition linked to a mutation in the SLC25A19 gene. Diamantoni confirmed that measles, rather than the underlying condition, was the cause of death.

The death is one of two that the Pennsylvania Department of Health identified last week as measles-related. The other victim was a newborn boy from an Amish family in the same county.

Dispute over CDC reporting

The deaths became the subject of controversy after Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed without evidence that the state might have fabricated them. Diamantoni had previously said his office had not received the reports when the state announced the deaths, but Lancaster County has no health department of its own and relies on information from the state.

During a dispute with Governor Josh Shapiro, Kennedy directed CDC Director Erica Schwartz to remove the deaths from the agency’s data. They disappeared from the CDC’s public website, although reports said they remained in an internal database.

As of Friday, the deaths were still absent from the CDC’s public 2026 statistics. An asterisk instead carried a note saying that the National Center for Health Statistics did not currently have death records listing measles as the underlying cause.

The second infant death

The second infant’s mother was seriously ill with measles during labor. The boy was born with a pulse but was not breathing and died less than half an hour after paramedics were called.

Medical evaluations found measles and evidence of infection in the infant’s lungs. Diamantoni said a pathologist identified a ruptured spleen as the cause of death, but infectious-disease expert Paul Offit challenged that assessment, saying measles could have made the spleen vulnerable to rupture.

Shapiro called on Kennedy to accurately include the deaths on the CDC dashboard and follow medical experts’ guidance.