Pennsylvania Measles Outbreak 2026: Deaths, Exposures & How to Protect Your Family
- Pennsylvania has publicly named five measles exposure sites this year. Using the Department of Health’s own 7-to-21-day incubation figure, four of those watch windows have already closed. One is still open: Whole Foods Market at 1563 Fruitville Pike in Lancaster, exposed 12 August, watch until 2 September 2026.
- A closed window is not the all-clear. It means that one notified location has stopped being actionable — not that the outbreak has slowed. The state dashboard recorded 94 new cases in the seven days to 26 August, roughly a fifth of the year’s total in a single week.
- Two people have died, both unvaccinated, both Lancaster County residents. They are Pennsylvania’s first measles-associated deaths since 1991.
- Of the 424 cases on the state dashboard as of 26 August 2026, the share who were fully vaccinated is listed as 0%. Two MMR doses give 97% lifetime protection, and nearly 94% of Pennsylvania kindergarteners already have both.
Pennsylvania has published five measles exposure notices this year. They are all still sitting on the state’s website, and nothing on any of them tells you that four have expired.
That matters, because an exposure notice is not a warning about a place. It is a warning about a date. If you stood in that building on that afternoon, the state is telling you to watch yourself for symptoms — and the watching has an end. The Department of Health puts measles incubation at 7 to 21 days, so twenty-one days after the exposure, either you got it or you didn’t.
Here is that arithmetic, done. As of 27 August 2026, one window is still open and four have closed.
Is my exposure window still open?
Only if you were at the Whole Foods Market on Fruitville Pike in Lancaster on 12 August. That window runs to 2 September 2026. The other four notified exposures are past their twenty-one days.
| Exposure | Watch window | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Kohl’s, 2350 Lincoln Highway East, Lancaster — 21, 23, 25 and 26 May | 28 May – 16 June | Closed |
| Lancaster County Courthouse, 50 North Duke Street — 3 June, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. | 10 – 24 June | Closed |
| Lowe’s, 1389 N. Susquehanna Trail, Selinsgrove — 14 July, 1 to 5 p.m. | 21 July – 4 August | Closed |
| Millersville University soccer camp — 4 and 5 August | 11 – 26 August | Closed |
| Whole Foods Market, 1563 Fruitville Pike, Lancaster — 12 August | 19 August – 2 September | Open |
The windows open on day 7 and close on day 21 after the exposure, which is the range the Department of Health gives in every one of these notices. Where an exposure spans several dates, the window opens seven days after the first and closes twenty-one days after the last.
CDC’s own figure is narrower — symptoms usually begin 7 to 14 days after infection. The two are compatible rather than contradictory: 7 to 14 days is the typical range, and 21 days is the outer bound the state watches to. The table uses the state’s longer figure, because a window that closes too early is by far the more dangerous of the two errors.
The Millersville window closed on 26 August, the day before this was published. That is recent enough that anyone who was at that soccer camp and has felt fine throughout should still mention it to their doctor rather than assume the date settles it.
Does a closed window mean the outbreak is over?
No, and this is the part worth being clear about. A closed window means one notified location has stopped being actionable. It says nothing about how the outbreak is going, and the outbreak is not going well.
The state dashboard recorded 94 new cases in the seven days to 26 August — roughly a fifth of the entire year’s total in a single week. The five sites above are the places where a known case crossed paths with the general public and could be named. Five notified sites against 424 cases is the ratio worth holding on to. A public notice covers the places a known case happened to be seen in public — not the places where most people are catching it. The Department does not publish a breakdown of where each case was acquired, so this page does not claim one.
So the table tells you whether that specific afternoon still needs watching. It does not tell you whether measles is circulating near you. For that, the state’s own dashboard is the live source, and it updates at 2 p.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
What are the current measles numbers in Pennsylvania?
424 cases, 73 hospitalisations and two deaths, on the Department of Health dashboard as it stood on 26 August 2026.
| Figure | Value |
|---|---|
| Total cases, year to date | 424 |
| New cases in the last 7 days | 94 |
| Hospitalised | 73 |
| Under 18 years old | 32% |
| Fully vaccinated | 0% |
| Deaths | 2 |
Two of those numbers deserve a second look.
73 hospitalised out of 424 is 17%. In its 25 August statement the Department separately says nearly 20% of people who contract measles are hospitalised. The outbreak is tracking its own textbook figure, which is a reminder that measles is not a rash — one in five or six of these people needed a hospital.
The “fully vaccinated” tile reads 0%. That is the share of the 424 cases who had completed the MMR course. Both people who died were unvaccinated.
You will see a different case count in the 25 August press release, which says the Department “has confirmed 393 cases in 28 counties” this year. That release is a day older than the dashboard, and the two use different labels — “confirmed cases” against the dashboard’s “total cases”. Which of those accounts for the gap of 31 is not something the Department states, so this page does not guess. Where they disagree, the dashboard is the running record.
Who died, and what is known about them?
Two Lancaster County residents, both unvaccinated. That is the Department of Health’s own wording in its 25 August 2026 statement, which also said it would release no further details that could identify the individuals or their families.
These are Pennsylvania’s first measles-associated deaths since 1991 — thirty-five years. The Department’s own figure is that measles kills one to three patients per 1,000 cases. Two deaths in 424 cases is above that range, though at these numbers a single case moves the rate a long way, and neither the case count nor the toll is final.
What are the symptoms, and when would they start?
Fever, cough, runny nose and red, watery eyes first — the rash comes later, starting on the head and spreading downward. The Department of Health puts the onset at 7 to 21 days after exposure.
The order matters, and CDC’s timeline shows why. The rash arrives three to five days after the first symptoms, and a person can spread measles from four days before the rash appears through four days after. Put those together and someone is contagious for essentially the whole time they have been ill — from around the day the fever and cough start, before anyone could reasonably know what it is. Someone watching for “the measles rash” as the first sign will miss the window in which it was most useful to know.
Two other properties of the virus explain why the exposure notices exist at all. Measles spreads when an infected person breathes, coughs or sneezes, and the virus stays infectious in the air and on surfaces for up to two hours after that person has left the room. That is why a six-and-a-half-hour visit to a courthouse generates a public notice, and why “I never went near anyone” is not protective.
What should I do if I think I was exposed?
Call ahead — do not walk into a waiting room. Contact your health care provider, or the Department of Health’s toll-free hotline on 877-PA-HEALTH (877-724-3258).
The call-ahead part is not politeness. Someone with early measles symptoms is already inside the contagious window — it opens four days before the rash, which is roughly when the fever and cough begin — so sitting in a general waiting room can expose everyone in it, including infants too young to be vaccinated. Providers can arrange to see a suspected case without that happening, but only if they know first.
If you are unvaccinated, that call is more urgent, because the preventive options run on a clock. The Department’s own advisory to clinicians states it plainly: post-exposure prophylaxis is either MMR within 72 hours of exposure or immunoglobulin within six days, with the choice depending on how much time has passed and on whether there is any medical reason not to vaccinate.
Both clocks start at the exposure, not at the moment you find out about it. For all five notified sites above the latest exposure was 12 August, so both windows have long closed and what remains for those locations is watching for symptoms. The 72-hour and six-day figures matter for an exposure from here on — including inside a household where someone has already been diagnosed.
How well does the MMR vaccine work, and where can I get one?
Two doses give 97% lifetime protection, which is the figure the Department of Health and the Governor’s office both use.
CDC puts a single dose at 93% effective against measles, against 97% for two. That gap is why an outbreak sometimes prompts an extra dose for people who have only one documented dose on record — CDC says public health authorities will notify those they consider to be at increased risk. If you do not know how many doses you had, that is worth establishing now rather than during an exposure.
Pennsylvania is running the vaccine out to the affected communities rather than waiting for people to come to it. As of 25 August the state had held 91 pop-up vaccine clinics this year with 40 more planned, and had given more than 4,100 doses at those clinics since the outbreak began in April. More than 35,000 Pennsylvanians received an MMR vaccine in July 2026 — about 10,000 more than a typical month.
For where and when, the Department’s measles page at pa.gov/measles carries the current clinic schedule alongside the dashboard. Your regular provider and most pharmacies also stock MMR.
Who is most at risk?
People who are not vaccinated, on the CDC’s list that the Department of Health reproduces in its notices. Alongside them: infants under one year old, who are too young for the routine MMR vaccine, and people from parts of the world with low vaccination coverage or circulating measles.
The infant category deserves one clarification the state’s notices do not make. The routine schedule starts at 12 to 15 months, which is why those notices describe under-ones as too young. But CDC’s own vaccination guidance says public health authorities may recommend a dose for infants aged six to eleven months who are at risk of exposure — the same early dose given before international travel. Whether that applies to a particular baby in Lancaster County is a question for a paediatrician, and it is worth asking rather than assuming the answer is no.
Under six months there is no such option, and that is where everyone else’s vaccination status becomes other people’s business. Those babies are protected only by the people around them not carrying measles.
Statewide, that protection is mostly in place. Based on the 2024–2025 school year, nearly 94% of Pennsylvania kindergarten students had both required MMR doses. In its exposure notices earlier in the year the Department gave that coverage as its reason for saying overall risk to residents remained low; neither of its 25 August statements repeats the line. The two deaths, along with a case count where the fully-vaccinated share reads zero, are what the remaining gap looks like when the virus finds it.
Where the numbers on this page came from
Everything above is read from Pennsylvania’s own publications: the state measles dashboard as it stood on 26 August 2026, the Department of Health’s 25 August statement confirming the two deaths, the Governor’s office statement on the response issued the same day, and the five exposure notices themselves. All of them are reachable from pa.gov/measles, which is also where the dashboard lives.
That dashboard is the one to bookmark rather than this page. It moves three times a week, and it is the only version of these numbers that will still be right next month.
How we verified this
🔴 Every figure on this page comes from Pennsylvania’s own publications, not from coverage of them. The case, hospitalisation and death counts are read directly off the Department of Health’s measles dashboard, which states its own last update as 26 August 2026 and says it refreshes at 2 p.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. 26 August 2026 was a Wednesday — checked, because official pages get their own weekdays wrong often enough to be worth checking. The next refresh after publication falls on Friday 28 August.
🔴 The dashboard and the press release disagree, and the dashboard is newer. The Department’s 25 August statement announcing the two deaths says it “has confirmed 393 cases in 28 counties”. The dashboard’s tile reads 424 “total cases” the following day. Both are official, and they use different labels as well as different dates; the Department does not say which explains the gap of 31, so no explanation is offered here. This page leads with the dashboard figure and dates it, because a press release is a snapshot and the dashboard is the running record.
⚠️ “Overall risk to residents remains low” is dated deliberately. That line comes from the Department’s exposure notices earlier in the year, where it is tied to the kindergarten vaccination rate. It appears in neither of the 25 August statements — not the Department’s nor the Governor’s — so the page attributes it to the earlier notices rather than presenting it as the Department’s position after the deaths.
✅ The watch windows are arithmetic, not a claim. Each exposure notice states that “symptoms can start 7 to 21 days after exposure”. Applying that to the exposure dates in the same notices gives the windows in the table. Nothing about incubation is being estimated here — the range is the Department’s, in its own notices, and only the addition is ours.
⚠️ Five is the number Pennsylvania has published, not necessarily the number that exists. These are the exposure notices the Department of Health still links from its measles page. A location that was never notified publicly, or notified only to the people present, would not appear here or there.
🔴 No forecast of where this outbreak goes appears on this page. The case count is given with the date it was read and a link to the live dashboard, because a number typed into an article stops updating the moment it is typed and this one moves several times a week.
⚠️ “0% fully vaccinated” is the dashboard’s own rounded tile, covering the 424 cases year to date. It is reproduced as the state publishes it; a small non-zero number would round to the same figure.
🔴 Where the state’s notices and CDC differ on infants, both are given. Pennsylvania’s exposure notices describe infants under one as too young for MMR, which is true of the routine schedule that starts at 12 to 15 months. CDC’s vaccination guidance separately says authorities may recommend a dose for infants of six to eleven months who are at risk of exposure. An earlier version of this page said a six-month-old could not be protected directly; that was wrong, and in the direction that would stop a parent asking the question.
⚠️ The state and CDC give different incubation ranges, and the longer one is used on purpose. Pennsylvania’s notices say symptoms can start 7 to 21 days after exposure; CDC says they usually begin 7 to 14 days after infection. The table is built on the state’s 21-day outer bound, because a watch window that closes too early is the more dangerous error, and because it is the state’s own notices whose expiry this page is calculating.
✅ The contagious period is CDC’s, and an earlier version understated it. CDC gives it as four days before the rash appears through four days after, with the rash arriving three to five days after the first symptoms — so a person is contagious for essentially the whole time they have been ill. This page previously said “contagious for part of that”, which was wrong in the direction of making the virus sound easier to avoid.
✅ The post-exposure windows are the Department’s own, not general knowledge. MMR within 72 hours or immunoglobulin within six days comes from Pennsylvania’s Health Alert Network advisory to clinicians, which also states that the choice between them depends on elapsed time and on contraindications. The page says plainly that both clocks have already run out for all five notified sites, so that nobody reads them as a reason to rush somewhere for an exposure dated 12 August or earlier.
✅ The hospitalisation figures cross-check. The dashboard lists 73 hospitalised out of 424 cases, which is 17%. The Department’s 25 August statement separately says nearly 20% of people who contract measles are hospitalised. Those are consistent, which is a reason to trust both rather than either alone.