CDC Director Ordered Exclusion of Pennsylvania's Measles Deaths as Kennedy Disputes Toll

Pennsylvania's health department said the CDC was not including the state's measles deaths in the national count, deepening a dispute even as the state's outbreak climbed toward 1,000 cases.⁸³¹⁴

Infographic

Enlarge

A national count that lags the states

The CDC said the National Center for Health Statistics had verified a death and listed measles as its underlying cause, bringing the agency's official tally to two for the year. HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard explained that NCHS had followed its usual verification procedure to confirm the death had occurred and that measles was recorded as the underlying cause. She added that this finding now appears on the CDC's website.⁹⁸⁵

The CDC has moved from relying on state health department figures to NCHS mortality data, according to Reuters. CDC director Erica Schwartz's decision has meant that deaths reported by Pennsylvania are excluded from the agency's weekly measles case-and-death tally, leaving a gap between the state and federal totals.⁷¹

Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security scholar Amesh Adalja said the discrepancy risked undermining public confidence, telling reporters, "To the public, that gap looks like either incompetence or concealment." He separately suggested some reported deaths could be "invented or inflated."⁷

Pennsylvania's outbreak

Across 39 Pennsylvania counties, the confirmed measles tally now stands at 943, with 40 additional cases logged since 28 September and about four in ten infections clustered in Lancaster County. Officials in the state have confirmed four deaths tied to the outbreak. The state reported 114 new cases in the past seven days, with about a third of them in children under 18, and said fewer than 1% of its cases involved fully vaccinated people.³⁸¹

Lancaster County, home to under-vaccinated Amish and Mennonite communities in Pennsylvania Dutch Country, has recorded three of the deaths. At least 176 people have been hospitalised statewide, according to Al Jazeera, and case numbers have more than doubled since the outbreak began. The Pennsylvania health department said, "While daily numbers fluctuate, tracking these trends provides Pennsylvanians and health care providers with visibility into community transmission."³¹

¹²

Worst year since 1991

CDC data posted on 24 September showed 3,659 measles infections confirmed nationwide this year, according to the Guardian and Ars Technica, a total that sources describe as the highest since 1991, the year after the US declared the disease eliminated in 2000. NBC News reported that 2025 itself had already reached a 34-year high with 2,289 confirmed cases, and that the CDC recorded 48 outbreaks that year, up from 16 in 2024.¹⁴²

The outbreak's epicentre at the start of 2026 was South Carolina, with more than 600 confirmed cases before officials declared that outbreak over in April, according to NBC News. Pennsylvania's case numbers then surged from July onward. NBC News said the resurgence, combined with backsliding childhood vaccination rates, has put the country's elimination status at risk.²

Political dispute and CDC cuts

The death count has become the centre of a dispute between Pennsylvania's Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, seen as a potential 2028 presidential contender, and health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, a vaccine sceptic, according to the Washington Post. Kennedy accused Shapiro of politicising the deaths, saying, "The announcement appears to have been premature, and the deaths may even have been altogether fabricated by one of the Governor's hopeful staffers," and said "only one of the deaths was caused by measles," questioning whether the others were truly linked, according to Al Jazeera. A Pennsylvania health department spokesperson said CDC director Erica Schwartz had directed agency staff not to include the state's deaths in the national tally, even as Pennsylvania conditioned its request for a CDC Epi-Aid investigation on federal recognition of its death count.⁵³¹⁴⁸

The Guardian reported that the Trump administration laid off 18% of CDC staff in 2025, and that the agency now has 3,810 fewer civil service employees than a year earlier, a reduction described as totalling a third of its workforce.¹

Prevention

Health authorities continue to urge vaccination. The CDC said, "Two doses of the MMR vaccine provide the best protection against measles," while the Pennsylvania health department said the vaccine, given in two doses, "boosts a person's immune system and provides 97 percent lifetime protection." The Guardian noted that symptoms usually surface one to two weeks after exposure, and that the illness proves fatal in roughly one to three of every 1,000 cases.¹⁴

Vaccine policy shift

The move comes amid rising vaccine scepticism inside the administration; a University of Pennsylvania survey found that only one in three Americans believe Kennedy actually recommends the MMR vaccine.⁶