The death of a premature baby who contracted measles in utero is so far the only fatality connected to the current outbreak in Alberta. But it appears months of debate over the definition of congenital measles delayed the disclosure of the tragedy to the public.<\/p>\n
The death of the baby was made public on the provincial measles dashboard<\/a> on Oct. 2, 2025. At the time, the province declined to provide additional details, including the date of death. Documents obtained by The Globe and Mail show the death occurred at the end of July. <\/p>\n According to internal emails obtained by The Globe\u2019s Alanna Smith through a freedom of information request, senior officials in the Ministry of Primary and Preventative Health Services spent months discussing how to define congenital measles and which cases fit the criteria.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, measles cases were surging in Alberta, with the highest number of confirmed measles cases in a single week \u2013 147 \u2013 occurring in mid-July. By the time the death was reported publicly in the fall, the spread had significantly slowed.<\/p>\n According to one expert, while reporting delays can occur, a classification isn\u2019t necessarily required to alert people.<\/p>\n \u201cTimeliness is important when there\u2019s people at risk whose actions might be changed by knowing this information,\u201d said Lynora Saxinger, an infectious-diseases specialist at the University of Alberta Hospital.<\/p>\n Alberta has the highest rate of measles cases per capita of any province or territory, and has been under scrutiny for its response. Canada\u2019s measles outbreak began in November, 2024, and the country lost<\/a> its long-held measles elimination status last November.<\/p>\n The Globe has previously reported how Alberta rejected expert advice to include probable measles cases in public reporting. The Globe has also detailed how the province delayed efforts by public-health officials<\/a> to stifle the transmission of measles.<\/p>\n The internal emails show the back and forth that took place over how to define the baby\u2019s case.<\/p>\n On Aug. 23, Sunil Sookram, then Alberta\u2019s interim chief medical officer of health, told his colleagues that they were waiting on the Public Health Agency of Canada and Alberta Communicable Disease Control to define congenital measles before classifying the death.<\/p>\n But Anna Maddison, a spokesperson for PHAC, said in a statement that the national agency finalized the definition in July, 2025. She said PHAC was first made aware of the Alberta death in October.<\/p>\n Newborns who demonstrate laboratory evidence of measles within the first 10 days of life, whose parent was a confirmed or probable case, or who had no other suspected source of exposure are considered a confirmed case. A probable case follows much of the same criteria but does not have a laboratory confirmation.<\/p>\n The documents indicate Alberta updated its own case definition by Sept. 16. The death of the baby was reported more than two weeks later.<\/p>\n This is the weekly Alberta newsletter written by Alberta Bureau Chief Mark Iype<\/a>. If you\u2019re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The death of a premature baby who contracted measles in utero is so far the only fatality connected…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159394,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[901,49,48,84,1412,2922,13846,13845],"class_list":["post-458456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-alberta","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-health","tag-newsletter","tag-noastack","tag-regionalpage","tag-western-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=458456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}