CDC Won't Count Four Pennsylvania Measles Deaths

CDC's measles dashboard still excludes four Pennsylvania deaths as Congress demands a briefing and the outbreak accelerates.

The CDC updated its national measles dashboard on Friday, but it is still not counting four measles deaths in Pennsylvania, where The Guardian reports the outbreak appears to be accelerating. The agency says it is temporarily relying on National Center for Health Statistics data while it works with the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists to craft a formal definition of a measles death, a definition it has never needed because the United States went a decade without one. HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard did not answer the Guardian's questions about why the death count remains delayed. Members of Congress on Monday requested an "immediate briefing" on the reporting change as national cases reach levels not seen in decades.

Doctors in Pennsylvania say they are treating congenital measles, in which newborns contract the virus in utero or at birth, once exceedingly rare because vaccines or childhood infection protected pregnant people. Dr John Goldman, an infectious disease specialist at UPMC, told The Guardian: "We're literally seeing new forms of measles," adding there is little information about how congenital cases behave. Pennsylvania has reported 731 cases, a figure Goldman believes is an undercount because sick household members often go untested. A possible measles exposure was also reported in the NICU at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia last week, per The Guardian, and inkl reports a second Philadelphia-area exposure at the airport's B and F terminals overnight September 13-14.

According to The Guardian, HHS Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has cast doubt on the Pennsylvania deaths and reportedly instructed CDC Director Erica Schwartz not to include them in the tally. Schwartz denied political motivation, arguing the delay reflects the work of building a definition and invoking a hypothetical bus crash wrongly labeled a Covid death. Former CDC chief medical officer Debra Houry counters that Pennsylvania's own definition clearly excludes unrelated deaths, that the state concluded investigations on the first two deaths so the CDC would already hold the records, and that Schwartz's comments "contribute to misinformation." Kennedy mentioned the outbreak only once in a nearly 90-minute speech at an anti-vaccine conference.

Measles kills one to three people per 1,000 cases and hospitalizes one in five, yet The Guardian reports Pennsylvania's deaths and admissions are "definitely not proportional to what would be expected," which Houry calls "very much an undercount." Under-testing hampers contact tracing and lets contagious people skip isolation. Pennsylvania has mounted an aggressive response with more than 100 pop-up clinics, 24-hour test turnaround and a state request for CDC vaccination support, and Goldman credits the health department with a "spectacular job." Still, he expects three to six more months of cases and fears measles is "the canary in the coal mine" for whooping cough, diphtheria and polio. Inkl reports a Chippewa County, Wisconsin case on September 22 that may sit outside that state's main outbreak cluster.