sworn in as CDC director<\/a> in August, ordered the deaths to be excluded from the agency\u2019s weekly measles update, according to current and former officials quoted by several US media organisations, including the New York Times.<\/p>\nThe CDC had initially added the two cases to the website tracking national measles deaths, but later removed them, posting a notice saying it was reviewing additional information about the cases.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt this time, available information does not establish whether measles caused or contributed to the deaths or whether the individuals died from other causes while infected with measles,\u201d the CDC website read on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The Pennsylvania Department of Health announced on August 25 that two unvaccinated Lancaster County residents had died in cases it classified as \u201cmeasles-associated\u201d. They were the state\u2019s first such deaths in 35 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy deepest sympathies are with the loved ones who are facing this unimaginable loss,\u201d Pennsylvania Health Secretary Debra Bogen said in a statement following the announcement.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a physician, I want to make sure that people understand that the MMR vaccine is safe and provides the best protection we have against measles.\u201d<\/p>\n
Questions over health policy<\/p>\n
The CDC\u2019s change comes after Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, a prominent vaccine sceptic ahead of his appointment to the role, publicly questioned Pennsylvania\u2019s cases last week.<\/p>\n
In a post on X, Kennedy said the announcement \u201cmay even have been altogether fabricated by one of the Governor\u2019s hopeful staffers\u201d.<\/p>\n
During a Fox News town hall on Saturday, Kennedy said he wanted Health and Human Services, a federal agency, to redirect resources to chronic disease and deaths linked to foodborne illness and away from infectious disease.<\/p>\n
\u201cDemagogue politicians are constantly trying to scare us about infectious disease, and we take the attention away from the chronic disease that is being caused \u2026 by big food companies, by big pharmaceutical companies,\u201d Kennedy said on Fox News.<\/p>\n
The CDC\u2019s decision has raised concerns over whether the Trump administration will accelerate second-guessing state public health determinations.<\/p>\n
Pennsylvania has disputed the federal account of what information was provided to the CDC, saying the deaths were reported to the agency\u2019s measles response team and that state epidemiologists thoroughly investigated both cases.<\/p>\n
Health experts have questioned several of the Trump administration\u2019s health policies since the president took office for his second term in January 2025.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, President Donald Trump signed an executive order<\/a> aiming to roll back recommended childhood immunizations and split the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine into three separate doses, falsely suggesting that the combined vaccine can be lethal.<\/p>\nSeveral top medical organisations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), have said spacing out the doses can create unneeded barriers to vaccines. That can in turn increase the number of unvaccinated children.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Clash with Pennsylvania comes as US records highest number of measles cases in decades. The United States Centers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":757275,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[141,59,102,50,56,54,158,55,3544],"class_list":["post-757274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-donald-trump","tag-gb","tag-health","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-united-states","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-us-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=757274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/757275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=757274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=757274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=757274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}