Last week’s announcement of the state’s first measles-related deaths in decades has ignited a public feud among politicians and health officials who disagree over the role of the contagious disease in the fatalities.
When the state Department of Health reported that two unvaccinated Lancaster County residents died after being infected with measles, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro stressed that vaccinations could have prevented the deaths.
But the announcement quickly came under fire, as a clash erupted between Shapiro and US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a Trump administration appointee with a history of raising alarms about established vaccines. Kennedy said in a social post the deaths “may even have been altogether fabricated.”
What’s not disputed is that both people who died had been infected with measles and they were unvaccinated. The unresolved question is whether measles was the main cause, or a contributing cause, of their deaths.
As the public debate continues, medical experts say the brouhaha has diverted focus from an exploding public health threat.
“Now it’s turned political,” Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease doctor in the Pittsburgh area, told The Associated Press. “It’s no longer about getting answers and figuring this out.”
Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine researcher at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said he’s worried that two measles-related deaths are an unusually high number in a county that reportedly has about 400 cases. The expected death rate for measles is 1 in 1,000 cases.
That suggests there are a large number of other unreported infections in the Lancaster County area, according to Offit.
That’s worrisome, given that this is the time of year when kids go back to school, which could increase the spread of an extremely transmissible disease. Vaccination efforts need to be stepped up “to prevent what I think is a coming disaster,” Offit said.
As of Friday, 86 new measles cases had been reported in the state over the last seven days. You can track measles cases throughout this state via this health department dashboard.
