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The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cast doubt on Pennsylvania officials’ statements about two recent measles-related deaths, intensifying a dispute between the Trump administration and the state over the disease outbreak. In a social media post, the top US public health agency said Governor Josh Shapiro has rejected help from the agency and declined to provide more information on the deaths. The CDC also thanked Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for raising questions about whether the two people had actually died from measles. (Nix, 8/27)

The death of two Pennsylvanians with measles has sparked a social media row between the state’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The dispute has also reprised a Covid 19-era debate: How much does it matter whether someone died from a disease or just died with a disease? Pennsylvania health authorities strongly implied that the two died from measles in announcing their deaths Tuesday but also left some wiggle room in describing the deaths as “measles-associated.” (Paun, 8/27)

After the Pennsylvania Health Department announced Wednesday that one of the two people whose deaths in the state were associated with measles was an infant, the coroner involved in the case has said he does not consider measles to be the cause of death. The Lancaster County coroner, Dr. Stephen Diamantoni, said in an interview Wednesday evening that the baby died shortly after birth from an internal hemorrhage and “traumatic rupture” of the spleen. He said he found evidence of the measles virus in the infant’s lung tissue. (Mayk, Bendix and Edwards, 8/27)

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. repeatedly told lawmakers who held the key to his confirmation last year that a 2019 visit to Samoa before a deadly measles outbreak had “nothing to do with vaccines.” New documents obtained by The Associated Press and The Guardian refute that testimony. Kennedy, then a prominent anti-vaccine activist, preceded the visit with a letter to the Samoan prime minister requesting to study the Pacific island nation’s measles, mumps and rubella vaccines after the deaths of two children who had received them. In the letter, he used the words vaccine or vaccination eight times. (Swenson, 8/27)