Pennsylvania doctors have blasted the Trump administration over its decision to erase two measles deaths reported by the state from the federal record. In August, the state reported its first measles deaths in 35 years as cases reached their highest levels in the United States in over three decades. Shortly after that announcement, Health Secretary Robert F.
Kennedy, Jr. suggested that Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s office had "fabricated" the reports. This weekend, new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Erica Schwartz, ordered federal officials to contradict the death reports, according to The New York Times.
The CDC also erased the deaths from its own measles database. The rare steps drew condemnation from doctors in Pennsylvania, who have worked on the frontlines of measles outbreaks, and a high-ranking CDC official who previously worked under the Trump administration. Paul Offit, a pediatrician and infectious disease expert at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told The Independent Tuesday.
The Trump administration’s decision to delete the measles cases calls into question whether the CDC is being driven by science or ideology, Dr. Deb Houry, the CDC Chief Medical Officer under Trump who resigned last August, told The Independent. She pointed out that the CDC did not question reported measles deaths in Texas or New Mexico last year.
And the big picture is being lost — two people died. That is tragic and should be addressed,” Houry, a senior fellow at the Yale School of Public Health and an adjunct professor at Emory University,” wrote in an email. The Lancaster County measles deaths are the first reported in the U.S. this year.
Amesh Adalja, a Pittsburgh infectious disease physician, told The Independent he was “not surprised that CDC official statistics are the way they are.” He added: “RFK Jr has said he believes the deaths to be ‘fabricated’ and CDC is one of his agencies that he has thoroughly remade in his image.” Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic, has also claimed that Shapiro violated standard public health policy by refusing to share information on the measles deaths with the CDC or Lancaster County’s health department. The secretary was responding to a post from Lancaster County Commissioner Josh Parsons, a pro-Trump conservative, who claimed there was “a deception” in the state’s findings. In his post, Parsons cited statements from Lancaster County Coroner Stephen Diamontoni, who claimed one of the two deaths was caused by a ruptured spleen, instead of the newborn’s measles infection.
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