The Pennsylvania deaths have prompted a heated debate between the state\u2019s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, and President Donald Trump\u2019s vaccine-sceptic health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy jnr.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis serious situation continues to be made worse by RFK Jr. playing games with public health and safety,\u201d Shapiro wrote in an X post Tuesday, adding \u201cit\u2019s long past time\u201d for Kennedy to \u201cstop stoking vaccine scepticism and misinformation\u201d.<\/p>\n
Shapiro noted there have been to date 693 recorded cases of measles in Pennsylvania alone. More than 3290 cases of measles have been recorded across the US this year.<\/p>\n
The governor also accused Kennedy of ordering federal officials at the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) \u201cto not report these Pennsylvania deaths, presumably because it doesn\u2019t fit his narrative\u201d.<\/p>\n
Kennedy denied that allegation in a response on X, and accused Shapiro of politicising the \u201coutbreak instead of implementing a unified public health response\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have repeatedly stated that MMR vaccination is the most effective way to prevent measles,\u201d Kennedy said, referring to the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella.<\/p>\n
Measles causes fever, respiratory symptoms, skin rashes and can have serious complications, including pneumonia, brain-damaging inflammation and death.<\/p>\n
The disease was considered eliminated in the United States in 2000, thanks to vaccination, but has made a strong comeback in recent years amid declining vaccination rates and a backdrop of growing mistrust of health authorities.<\/p>\n
Non-medical exemptions to vaccination have surged since the Covid-19 pandemic, allowing Americans to avoid the shots by invoking religious beliefs or other philosophical reasons.<\/p>\n
Before a vaccine was developed in the early 1960s, measles killed hundreds of children every year in the US, and continues to cause tens of thousands of deaths globally.<\/p>\n
– AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Pennsylvania deaths have prompted a heated debate between the state\u2019s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, and President Donald…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":601687,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[806,29893,2223,634,9060,7191,11585,6119,3232,9978,305,134,78,19136,7055,20311,296493,13611,111,139,69,17976,9016,15267,13672,3040,296494],"class_list":["post-601686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-as","tag-authorities","tag-confirmed","tag-death","tag-decades","tag-disease","tag-eastern","tag-faces","tag-fourth","tag-grows","tag-have","tag-health","tag-in","tag-largest","tag-linked","tag-measles","tag-measlesrelated","tag-nation","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-outbreak","tag-pennsylvania","tag-reported","tag-state","tag-us","tag-vaccinepreventable"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/601687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}