A child in Lewis County, New York, has died after contracting measles, Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a statement Monday. This is the first measles-related death in the state in 30 years.
“As a mother and grandmother, I cannot imagine what this family is going through. My heart goes out to everyone who knew and loved this child,” she said. “Measles is highly contagious and vaccination remains our best protection against this dangerous disease. This is the first measles-related death in New York in 30 years, a devastating reminder of what is at stake when Washington deliberately erodes decades of progress in protecting Americans from preventable diseases.”
“In New York, we will continue to follow proven public health measures and do everything we can to keep New Yorkers safe and healthy. »
CNN has contacted the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the New York State Department of Health and the Lewis County Health Department for more information.
Rising measles cases prompted Hochul to declare a statewide state of emergency last month. As of Wednesday, 168 cases had been reported in New York, according to CDC data. Lewis County reported 15 cases as of Oct. 14, all in people who did not receive the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine.
Measles typically results in hospitalization for about 1 in 5 unvaccinated people, according to the CDC. At least one in 20 children with measles gets pneumonia, the most common cause of measles death in young children. One in 1,000 children with measles will develop encephalitis, or swelling of the brain.
More than 4,800 cases of measles have been reported in the United States this year, according to the CDC — the highest number since 1990, a decade before measles was declared eliminated in the United States. More than a quarter of those cases occurred in Pennsylvania, which reported five measles-related deaths.
The Pan American Health Organization, a branch of the World Health Organization, is expected to hold a measles elimination commission meeting next week, as the United States is expected to lose the elimination status it has held since 2000.
Public health experts have largely attributed the increase in measles cases in the United States to falling vaccination rates, although the increase in cases has led to increased vaccinations in some places.
Two doses of the MMR vaccine are recommended during childhood to provide 97% protection against measles infections.
By 2024, 93% of U.S. 3-year-olds had received at least one dose of MMR, according to data from the CDC’s National Immunization Surveys, below the 95% threshold needed to prevent outbreaks of this highly contagious disease. But in 2025 – the year marked by the first death from measles in the country in decades – the rate rose to 97% among 3-year-olds.
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has drawn widespread criticism for his response to measles outbreaks, including downplaying the immunity conferred by the MMR vaccine. In Pennsylvania, measles-related deaths also sparked a war of words between Kennedy and state officials.
President Donald Trump has also repeated misinformation about vaccines, including linking them to autism and saying children were getting “a huge amount of vaccine” into their bodies.
CNN’s Deidre McPhillips and Meg Tirrell contributed to this report.
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