READING, Pa. \u2014 A new dispute Thursday night over Pennsylvania’s measles cases and two reported deaths.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The state says two unvaccinated Lancaster County residents died in connection with measles, including an infant.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But the Lancaster County Coroner says although measles was found in the infant’s body, the baby did not die from measles.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The nation’s top health official says the federal government is questioning the deaths and accusing Pennsylvania of not sharing information.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We’re trying to figure out, you know, who those deaths were and whether they actually happened,” said\u00a0Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.<\/p>\n
Kennedy made that claim Thursday, as new information emerged about one of the deaths.<\/p>\n
The Lancaster County Coroner says an infant who tested positive for measles died from a ruptured spleen, not measles.<\/p>\n
But Pennsylvania’s Department of Health stands by calling it a “measles-associated death.”<\/p>\n
Officials say that means measles was detected in the person who died. It does not necessarily mean measles was the direct cause of death.<\/p>\n
“We’re trying to get information about those two casualties,” Kennedy said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lancaster County Commissioner Josh Parsons is also questioning the state’s announcement, saying the infant died with measles, not from it.<\/p>\n
“The only state that won’t cooperate with us is Pennsylvania, and we can’t get any information,” said Kennedy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Pennsylvania Health Secretary Dr. Debra Bogen is pushing back.<\/p>\n
She says her department investigated both cases and confirmed both people tested positive for measles.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Gov. Josh Shapiro claims Kennedy is spreading conspiracy theories regarding vaccine components.<\/p>\n
Despite the disagreement over the deaths, Kennedy and Pennsylvania officials do agree on one simple and important step.<\/p>\n
“Our advice is that people should get the measles vaccination,” Kennedy said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. \u2014 A new dispute Thursday night over Pennsylvania’s measles cases and two reported deaths.\u00a0 The state…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273642,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,115085,3685,4913,50383,28,2303,128,130,129,521,1394],"class_list":["post-273641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-berks-county","tag-community-awareness","tag-lancaster-county","tag-measles","tag-outbreak","tag-pennsylvania","tag-public-health","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-school","tag-vaccination"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}