NY Declares Measles 'Emergency' as Neighboring PA Surpasses 1,000 Cases in Largest Outbreak in Decades

As measles cases surge around the country—including in neighboring Pennsylvania, where the largest outbreak in decades is surging—New York declared a measles "emergency" on Monday. The statewide emergency declaration, announced by Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, marks the first issued by a US state since last year, when the US saw over 2,000 cases of the illness after decades of it having been essentially eliminated. This year has been even worse, with more than 3,900 cases reported across the US according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as of October 2—the worst outbreak since 1991. By comparison, 2024 saw just 285 reported cases. Outbreaks over the past two years have resulted in eight deaths across the country. New York has identified at least 108 measles cases this year, mostly in rural communities with low vaccination rates. The emergency order, which will be in effect through November 4, is set to expand the number of health professionals who can administer the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and order measles tests, allow pharmacists to vaccinate children as young as 2, and require vaccines to be reported to state immunization registries within 72 hours. "No one should get seriously ill or die from a vaccine-preventable disease," Hochul said, announcing the order on Monday. > At the same time, Pennsylvania is experiencing a statewide outbreak unprecedented in the last three decades, surpassing 1,000 infections on Monday, according to state health officials. Since the outbreak began in April, at least 198 people have been hospitalized, and five have died. Officials said less than 1% of those cases were in people who'd been appropriately vaccinated. Pennsylvania's Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro has blamed the Trump administration's reversal of decades of federal vaccination policy for amplifying the crisis. He has singledout Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has spent decades sowing doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccinations, including—as recently as August—pushing the long-discredited myth that the MMR vaccine is linked to autism. Amid the measles resurgence over the past two years, RFK's approach has faced widespread criticism. He has repeatedly urged Americans to get the MMR vaccine. But he has often undercut that recommendation by claiming, without evidence, that the vaccine also causes deaths each year and that its benefits are "exaggerated" while promoting unproven alternative treatments. US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifies during a hearing on Capitol Hill on April 16, 2026, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Heather Diehl/Getty Images) As measles rampaged across Pennsylvania, Kennedy spoke on September 17 at a Washington, DC, convention hosted by Children's Health Defense, an anti-vaccine organization he helped to co-found. He told the attendees, which included prominent anti-vaccine activists, that they "have a strong and steadfast friend in the White House" and praised Trump's executive order calling to divide the MMR vaccine into separate doses, against the recommendation of major medical organizations. Several Republican lawmakers were also in attendance. When the first two measles deaths in Pennsylvania—of two unvaccinated people in Lancaster County—were reported in August, Kennedy suggested that they may have been “altogether fabricated by one of the governor’s hopeful staffers,” a claim that state health officials strenuously rejected. Since then, three more deaths have been recorded. “RFK is playing games with people’s lives here in Pennsylvania, not just by discouraging vaccination," Shapiro said in an interview on the Meidas Touch News Network Monday. "He won’t even acknowledge the five deaths here in Pennsylvania. He actually accused me of fabricating it and making it up, even when the families of those loved ones who have perished have expressed publicly their sadness and their grief." Despite the federal rollback, Shapiro said on Monday that Pennsylvania is making progress fighting the measles surge. He touted that the Department of Health had administered more than 53,000 doses of the MMR vaccine in September—more than double the average month's total. > Measles was declared eradicated in the US in 2000, with about 97% of kindergarten-age children having been fully immunized against the disease. Since then, vaccination coverage has dipped across the US to roughly 92%, with substantially lower rates in some communities where the largest outbreaks have taken hold. The majority of that national dip has taken place in just the past half-decade, since the Covid-19 pandemic: In 2019-20, MMR coverage for kindergarteners was still at over 95%. “The concerning rise in measles cases is due to a decrease in childhood vaccines driven by misinformation,” said New York state Sen. Gustavo Rivera (D-33), who chairs the state Senate’s health committee. Jeanne Franklin, the health director for Chester County in Pennsylvania, told The Guardian that the rampant misinformation surrounding vaccinations, amplified by anti-vaccine influencers, has made efforts to fight the measles epidemic in her state more challenging. "We have people in key positions saying it isn’t an outbreak, it isn’t a problem," Franklin said. "We have people who approach our nurses and say that they were told the vaccine will make them sterile, or that there’s a microchip within it."