Pennsylvania’s Public-Health Officials May Be Wrong About a Measles Death

Measles outbreaks around the country are already a disaster, but more bad news arrived on Tuesday.

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro announced that two measles-associated deaths had occurred in Lancaster County.

“These mark the first deaths related to measles within the Commonwealth in 35 years,” an accompanying statement declared.

Both individuals were said to have been unvaccinated, but the state Health Department declined to release any other information about the cases, citing privacy concerns.

By yesterday morning, though, this story was in doubt.

Lancaster County Commissioner Josh Parsons posted on X that he had spoken with the county’s coroner, who said that he had not identified any deaths due to measles.

One individual, Parsons wrote, “died WITH measles, but not from measles.” That evening, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F.

Kennedy Jr. offered a more conspiratorial angle: Perhaps the entire episode had been “fabricated by one of the Governor’s hopeful staffers.” Pennsylvania’s Health Department quickly doubled down : “As a pediatrician with more than 30 years of caring for children,” the state’s health secretary wrote, “I have thoroughly reviewed the case investigation information and sadly can confirm that there were two recent measles-associated deaths in Lancaster County.” But the facts that have emerged over the past 48 hours suggest that health officials may indeed have committed a catastrophic communication blunder—by either overstating the evidence or politicizing the deaths of citizens without conveying complete information about what had happened.

Here’s what we know so far: In the one case for which additional information has been released, an infant whose lab tests showed evidence of a measles infection died shortly after birth because of a lacerated spleen.

According to an interview with the county coroner conducted by The Philadelphia Inquirer , a forensic pathologist decided that this fatal injury was not related to the infection.

That pathologist’s judgment might be wrong.

Viruses (including measles) can cause the spleen to grow abnormally large, making it prone to rupture.

A 2024 Polish study , for instance, documented an enlarged spleen in four out of 26 infants who had been hospitalized for measles.

But there are certainly other potential explanations.