Diamantoni said earlier this week that his office had only recently received a state report about the girl’s death. At the time, he told reporters that the report involved a “child” but did not provide additional details.
President Kennedy’s intervention in measles death reporting
During a heated exchange with Mr. Shapiro, President Kennedy directed Erica Schwartz, the newly appointed director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to remove several deaths from the agency’s public data. CDC staff had previously acknowledged that the deaths were caused by measles and recorded them accordingly. Schwartz reportedly removed the cases from public-facing websites, although Thursday’s report indicated that they remained in the CDC’s internal database.
The deaths remain excluded from the CDC’s public measles data. As of Friday afternoon, the graph reporting 2,026 measles deaths displayed only an asterisk. The page was updated Friday, however, changing the explanation associated with that symbol. Previously, the note stated that available information did not establish whether measles caused or contributed to a death, or whether another condition was responsible. That language has since been removed and replaced with a statement saying, “The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) has no death records for 2026 that indicate measles as the underlying cause.”
Ars Technica contacted the Department of Health and Human Services about the revised explanation. The publication asked whether the CDC can now report outbreak-related deaths only after the NCHS receives official death records, and whether the NCHS had received such records when the CDC reported three measles deaths in Texas and New Mexico last year. The department did not immediately respond.
Before President Kennedy’s intervention, state and local health departments were responsible for determining whether deaths were measles-related, while the CDC reported the information provided by those agencies.
Newborn’s death linked to measles outbreak
The other death reported by the state health department involved a newborn Amish boy from Lancaster County. His mother was seriously ill with measles when she went into labor. She told The Atlantic that the illness left her extremely weak and barely able to speak above a whisper. When labor began, she said she “didn’t have any energy.”
The family was affected during a measles outbreak in Pennsylvania that has heavily impacted Lancaster County. Several of the mother’s other children became ill before she contracted the disease. The newborn had a pulse but was not breathing when he was delivered. Paramedics administered oxygen and performed chest compressions, but the baby was pronounced dead less than 30 minutes later. His parents believed the infant had died from measles, and their midwife reached the same conclusion.
Source: arstechnica.com