Amish Community in Spotlight Amid Pennsylvania Measles Outbreak: 1,398 Cases, Five Deaths

The Amish community of Lancaster in the US state of Pennsylvania has come into the spotlight amid a measles outbreak. According to the Pennsylvania department of health's most recent count, 1,398 measles cases had been detected in the state.

To tackle the outbreak, 150,000 doses of MMR vaccine had been administered in the state since 1 August, with more than 50,000 given in October alone.

Vaccination rates are low among the Lancaster Amish, descendants of German-speaking religious conservatives who settled there in 1760. A study found that less than a third of Amish residents had been immunized against measles, mumps and rubella. The report also noted there is no Amish religious opposition to vaccines broadly.

At the New Holland auction house in Lancaster last week, a ton of top quality hay was going for upwards of $400, up about 20% from last year. Alongside the price of hay, horses, donkeys and milk were also topics of conversation, as was the measles outbreak that has lasted for a year or more.

Standing outside a barn of horses, miniature ponies and donkeys, Christ Stoltzfoos said it was not that way 50 years ago in the community. All of his immediate family had been vaccinated and had not got sick, but some cousins were not and did. He said: 'You don't get to change anybody's mind. The people that changed their mind are the people who got really sick from it. They say now they would have gotten vaccinated.'

John Kaufman, 81, took a different view, saying the vaccine was hard on the immune system. 'You get the measles and you get over it. People have it once, and it's over. But if you hurt your immune system with the shots, something else will creep up on you,' he said.

Anna, a young woman at the auction, said her whole family had had measles except her dad, who got the vaccine, and described the experience as miserable. She said she would not get the vaccine now because, having had measles, she believed she was stronger for it.

Pennsylvania has recorded five measles-associated deaths — two infants and three adults with underlying health conditions — all unvaccinated by choice or too young to receive the vaccine, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. CDC data, by contrast, records three deaths nationwide out of 4,588 confirmed cases in the US in 2026. Pennsylvania accounts for 27% of US cases.

Democratic governor Josh Shapiro's administration has mounted an intensive outreach of pop-up clinics and mailings. The state has sent 300 health department staff to the area and administered nearly 6,000 vaccinations, Shapiro said. Health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr claimed the people of Pennsylvania suffered because Shapiro's administration politicized the outbreak. Shapiro replied that the CDC would not correctly acknowledge the measles-related deaths and accused Kennedy of doing great destruction by stoking vaccine skepticism.

Vaccination politics has also reached the race for Pennsylvania's 11th congressional district. Five-term Republican representative Lloyd Smucker, who was raised Amish until he was five, said the Amish are making decisions they think are best for their families and government's role should be research and transparency on vaccines. His Democratic challenger Nancy Mannion, a former emergency nurse, said the Amish are not anti-vaccination but access healthcare differently, tied the surge directly to Kennedy's anti-vaccine stance, and noted measles is completely preventable and had been eradicated.

Beyond Lancaster, the New York state health department has been battling three small Amish schools in upstate New York over whether children fall under immunization rules or should be granted an exemption on religious freedom grounds. Governor Kathy Hochul recently declared a statewide health emergency after more than 100 people contracted measles, an outbreak epidemiologists believe is connected to the Pennsylvania outbreak.