By Siddhi Mahatole
Sept 29 (Reuters) – The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday confirmed a second measles-related death in the country this year, as cases continue to rise across the United States.
The confirmation, posted on the agency’s website, did not specify in which states the deaths occurred but showed 3,659 measles infections in the US as of September 24.
Pennsylvania, the hardest hit by the outbreak, reported four measles-related deaths this year, but the CDC had not included them in its national tally.
The discrepancy has become the focus of a dispute between Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over whether deaths reported by the state should be counted in the federal tally.
The CDC has shifted to using mortality data from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) for its national measles death count, moving away from reliance on state health departments — drawing scrutiny.
Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said the gap between Pennsylvania’s tally and the federal count risked undermining public confidence.
“To the public, that gap looks like either incompetence or concealment,” Adalja said, adding that it could give vaccine skeptics grounds to argue that the deaths were “invented or inflated.”
The US Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, told Reuters that the NCHS had received another report from a state of a measles-related death and verified that measles was the underlying cause.
Last week’s first confirmed fatality was similarly added after the NCHS verified that measles was listed as the underlying cause of death.
The CDC has said it is working with state epidemiologists on a standard definition for measles-related deaths. The agency said its death count could change as additional information becomes available and reviews are completed.
(Reporting by Siddhi Mahatole in Bengaluru; Editing by Diti Pujara)
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