Shapiro Presses CDC to Count PA Measles Deaths

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro is publicly demanding that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) add four measles-associated deaths to its national dashboard, as the state’s outbreak — now the largest in the country — collides with a bitter political standoff over how the federal government reports public health data.

Speaking on CNN’s “The Source” on the night of September 16, Shapiro accused Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of personally intervening to keep the deaths off the CDC’s public count. “I’m not going to accept that until RFK does what is right and stops reaching down into his administration and directing the CDC staff not to acknowledge the pain and suffering of these four families in Pennsylvania,” he said, according to a WPSU/NPR report.

As of September 18, the CDC’s measles dashboard still lists an asterisk for 2026 deaths, alongside a note stating that the National Center for Health Statistics “does not currently have any death records from 2026 that indicate measles is the underlying cause.” The same page shows three deaths recorded in 2025.

A deadly outbreak in numbers

The human toll in Pennsylvania is well documented at the state level. According to the Pennsylvania Department of Health, 731 confirmed measles cases have been reported across 38 counties in 2026 — 141 of them requiring hospitalization — along with four confirmed measles-associated deaths.

The first two deaths, announced August 25, were infants from Lancaster County — the state’s first measles-associated deaths in 35 years. Two more followed in September: a 40-year-old woman from Jefferson County with an active infection, and an 18-year-old from Mifflin County who developed a rare neurological complication. All four individuals were unvaccinated, and neither infant was old enough to receive the first MMR dose.

The CDC’s national picture mirrors the state’s trend. The agency reports 3,471 confirmed measles cases nationwide in 2026, up sharply from 2,289 in 2025, with 95% of this year’s cases occurring in people who are unvaccinated or whose status is unknown.

The dispute over how deaths are counted

At the heart of the conflict is a technical but consequential question: what counts as a “measles-caused death”?

Details released by Lancaster County Coroner Dr. Stephen Diamantoni illustrate the difficulty. According to the Associated Press, via Spotlight PA, one infant — six-week-old Mary Stoltzfus — died on August 18 with measles listed as the direct cause. She had been born with a rare genetic condition called Amish lethal microcephaly that left her highly vulnerable to infection. The other, Ivan Miller, died on August 14 shortly after birth from a ruptured spleen; measles was listed on his death certificate as a contributing condition, not the underlying cause.

That distinction underlies the CDC’s case-by-case review. Kennedy has said the agency applies its own “measles-caused deaths” standard, and the CDC notes it is working with the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists to develop a standardized case definition for measles deaths — a process that could justify a lag in reporting.

Shapiro rejects that framing. In a social media post, he said Kennedy “personally intervened in an otherwise administrative process to direct the CDC to not report these Pennsylvania deaths,” a claim Kennedy denies. Earlier in the dispute, the health secretary questioned whether the deaths happened at all, suggesting they “may even have been altogether fabricated,” the AP reported.

A fight over federal help

The standoff now has a practical dimension. Shapiro has said Pennsylvania will not accept additional federal assistance to fight the outbreak until the CDC lists the deaths, telling CNN that the state would welcome support but “not … until RFK does what is right.”

Kennedy has dismissed the criticism, telling CNN earlier this summer that almost all recent measles outbreaks have occurred in religious communities that “just don’t vaccinate.” Five years ago, before becoming health secretary, he told an audience at an Amish county fair in Lancaster that the “cure for measles is chicken soup and vitamin A” and that public health agencies “cannot stand the fact that you are healthy,” according to a PhillyVoice account of his remarks.

Public health experts warn that the dispute itself carries a cost. “Frankly, the CDC is not to be trusted in sharing information,” Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, told the AP. “People are questioning their motives.” The concern is amplified by unusual edits to the CDC’s measles page, which at one point acknowledged two measles-associated deaths before being revised to say the agency was withholding them pending review.

Ground-level response and the vaccination gap

While officials argue in Washington and Harrisburg, state and local health teams have mounted an aggressive vaccination campaign. The Department of Health says it has administered nearly 4,400 MMR doses at 140 pop-up clinics since the outbreak began in late April, with more than 6,800 doses given by state health center staff in 2026 overall. In August alone, providers gave more than 46,000 MMR vaccines — nearly double a typical month.

The broader vulnerability is measurable. Kindergarten MMR coverage nationally has slipped from 95.2% in the 2019–2020 school year to 92.4% in 2025–2026, leaving roughly 280,000 kindergartners at risk. Pennsylvania’s own figures show 93.2% of kindergartners, 94.6% of seventh graders, and 96.9% of twelfth graders received both required MMR doses — below the 95% herd-immunity threshold in many schools.

“Now we see with the vaccination rates dropping, that those chinks in the armor are occurring, and it’s people who are susceptible, of course, suffering the consequences,” Dr. Stanley Martin, director of infectious diseases at Geisinger, told NPR. For Martin, the outbreak has been a jarring return to a disease he was once told he would never see in practice.

What’s next

The immediate question — whether the CDC will add Pennsylvania’s four deaths to its dashboard — remains unresolved, and it now doubles as a test of whether the agency can publish data that conflicts with its political leadership. Pennsylvania has also signaled it may withhold cooperation on federal assistance until the count changes.

The stakes extend well beyond one state. The U.S. lost its measles elimination status in 2025, and international health officials are scheduled to meet in November to decide whether the country and Mexico have formally forfeited measles-free status. With cases still climbing past 700 in Pennsylvania alone and national coverage below the threshold needed to prevent outbreaks, the dispute over four names on a dashboard may prove to be a footnote in a much larger story about eroding immunity.