Pennsylvania doctors have blasted the Trump administration over its decision to erase two measles deaths reported by the state from the federal record.
In August, the state reported its first measles deaths in 35 years as cases reached their highest levels in the United States in over three decades.
Shortly after that announcement, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. suggested that Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s office had “fabricated” the reports. This weekend, new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Erica Schwartz, ordered federal officials to challenge the deaths with the state, according to The New York Times. The CDC also erased the deaths from its own measles database.
The rare steps drew condemnation from doctors in Pennsylvania, who have worked on the frontlines of measles outbreaks, and a high-ranking CDC official who previously worked under the Trump administration.
“I’ve lost trust in the CDC,” Dr. Paul Offit, a pediatrician and infectious disease expert at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told The Independent Tuesday.
open image in gallery“There’s an attempt, frankly, to downplay the instance of measles and to downplay the measles deaths in that county,” he said, and added that he believes the CDC’s response has been political.
The Trump administration’s decision to delete the measles cases calls into question whether the CDC is being driven by science or ideology, Dr. Deb Houry, the CDC Chief Medical Officer under Trump who resigned last August, told The Independent.
She pointed out that the CDC did not question reported measles deaths in Texas or New Mexico last year.
“Whether you live in a blue, purple, or red state, the process and the collaboration should be the same. And the big picture is being lost — two people died. That is tragic and should be addressed,” Houry, a senior fellow at the Yale School of Public Health and an adjunct professor at Emory University,” wrote in an email.
The Lancaster County measles deaths are the first reported in the U.S. this year.
Dr. Amesh Adalja, a Pittsburgh infectious disease physician, told The Independent he was “not surprised that CDC official statistics are the way they are.”
He added: “RFK Jr has said he believes the deaths to be ‘fabricated’ and CDC is one of his agencies that he has thoroughly remade in his image.”
Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic, has also claimed that Shapiro violated standard public health policy by refusing to share information on the measles deaths with the CDC or Lancaster County’s health department.
open image in galleryThe secretary was responding to a post from Lancaster County Commissioner Josh Parsons, a pro-Trump conservative, who claimed there was “a deception” in the state’s findings.
In his post, Parsons cited statements from Lancaster County Coroner Stephen Diamontoni, who claimed one of the two deaths was caused by a ruptured spleen, instead of the newborn’s measles infection.
“It’s possible that an infection with measles can cause enlargement and inflammation of the spleen, making it more susceptible to rupture. But, in the opinion of our forensic pathologist, the spleen was neither enlarged or inflamed, and our forensic pathologist thought that, as that was the case, the laceration to the spleen was not related to the measles,” Diamontoni, a Republican elected in 2007, told WGAL this weekend.
To say that measles is not the cause of death, is “absurd,” Dr. Offit said. The baby is believed to have contracted measles in the womb from its mother, according to The Atlantic. Measles cases can cause a fragile spleen and the birth process is traumatic, Offit explained.
Other doctors agreed.
“A drunk driver runs a red light and kills you. The certificate says ‘blunt force trauma.’ Nobody argues about whether a drunk driver killed you or not,” Dr Céline Gounder, an expert in infectious diseases at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, wrote in a social media post.
“An unvaccinated mother got measles in pregnancy. Her newborn died from measles.”
The Independent has contacted Diamontoni for comment.
open image in galleryDetails of the second death have not been reported. Both deaths occurred in unvaccinated patients who tested positive for measles, the Pennsylvania Health Department said. The department added that every reported measles case is “thoroughly reviewed to confirm it meets the CDC’s case definition for a measles case.”
“To date, DOH has provided all required epidemiological data to the CDC regarding the two measles-associated deaths in Pennsylvania,” a spokesperson for Pennsylvania’s Health Department said in an email.
CDC spokesperson Grace Davis Jamison told The Independent that the measles deaths have not been confirmed based on the information currently available to CDC.
“CDC has a responsibility to ensure its reporting accurately and transparently reflects what is known and what remains unconfirmed,” she said.
She said the CDC’s measles databases – which shows no deaths – “reflects the best available information.”
There are 460 measles cases in Pennsylvania, and nearly 230 confirmed cases in Lancaster County. Seeing two deaths among confirmed measles cases suggests that the actual number of infections is actually much larger than reported, according to the Pennsylvania experts.
“The likeliest explanation is that the confirmed case count is a fraction of the real one,” Adalja said.