Pennsylvania Takes CDC 'Disease Detective' as Measles Outbreak Passes 1,260 Cases
The state has confirmed five measles-associated deaths in its worst outbreak in 35 years and is pressing the CDC to count them.
By Watchman Report staff ·
Pennsylvania will accept help from a CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service officer, a so-called disease detective, who is due to arrive Monday under the agency's Epi-Aid program, the state's top health official said Friday, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The state has logged 1,260 measles cases this year, 121 of them in the last week, across 43 of its 67 counties. Lancaster County has reported 452 cases. Pennsylvania has confirmed five measles-associated deaths in its worst outbreak in 35 years and is investigating a sixth.
The response has been complicated by a dispute over how deaths are counted. The CDC's national dashboard acknowledges only two measles deaths and does not say where they occurred, according to the Inquirer. In a letter Friday to CDC Director Erica Schwartz, state Health Secretary Debra Bogen wrote, "By not acknowledging the deaths, the CDC obscures the seriousness of this disease and the toll of measles across the U.S." HHS officials did not immediately respond to the newspaper's request for comment.
Gov. Josh Shapiro has criticized Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s long history of anti-vaccine advocacy. Kennedy has suggested that Shapiro's staff "fabricated" at least one of the deaths, after a county coroner said an infant's death was caused by a lacerated spleen; the Inquirer noted that physicians say measles can weaken the spleen. State officials say about 300 health department staffers are working on the outbreak, and that providers have doubled the number of measles, mumps and rubella vaccinations they normally give.
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