A sixth person has died in Pennsylvania's measles outbreak, which has now infected more than a thousand people since it started in April.
The victim was a 39-year-old woman from Franklin County who tested positive for measles and died on October 10. She was unvaccinated and had several underlying health conditions, according to an advisory posted by Franklin County Coroner Jordan Conner. The coroner's office said the primary cause of death was a probable acute cardiac event linked to possible complications from measles. State health officials have confirmed the death meets Pennsylvania's official definition of a measles fatality.
Six deaths from one state outbreak is a stark number for a disease the US declared eliminated in 2000. It takes sustained, high vaccination coverage to keep measles from spreading once it arrives, and a thousand-plus cases in six months suggests that coverage has gaps large enough for the virus to move freely and find people whose health was already compromised.
Elimination, it turns out, was never permanent. It was a status that depended on everyone else staying vaccinated.