A six-week-old child in Pennsylvania died from measles, the Lancaster county coroner has determined, following two measles-related deaths in the county last week.
The determination comes as Lancaster county faces a growing measles outbreak.
Stephen Diamantoni, the county coroner, confirmed the death to multiple news outlets and said that the infant had Amish lethal microcephaly. Children with the condition typically live to only five to six months, and it can make children more vulnerable to respiratory infections.
State health officials have not confirmed whether the six-week-old was one of the two deaths announced last week, according to the New York Times.
The first death, on 14 August, involved an infant whose mother had measles and transmitted it to the child.
In that case, the coroner told WGAL that a ruptured spleen, not measles, was the cause of death. Measles, however, was listed on the newborn’s death certificate, the outlet reported. The Atlantic reported that the parents believe their baby died from measles.
Pennsylvania has counted nearly 400 measles cases across 28 counties, nearly half of which are in southern Lancaster county. Most of the cases reported to state health authorities are in adults between 18 and 49. Official tallies are typically an undercount of actual cases.
At a news conference last week, the Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, and the state’s secretary of health, Debra Bogen, said two Lancaster county residents had died in cases described as “measles-associated”. They did not provide further details, citing privacy laws and respect for the deceased and their families.
The recent deaths have fueled a dispute between Shapiro, a Democrat, and the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.
Officials strongly suggested that the two deaths were caused by measles when they announced them, but the distinction of “measles-associated” led some on the right to dispute whether measles was actually the cause.
Shapiro had criticized Kennedy, a longtime vaccine skeptic, over his history of misinformation surrounding vaccines. The governor said that Kennedy’s rhetoric has not helped contain the measles epidemic, which has pushed US cases to the highest number in over three decades.
Kennedy responded by suggesting Shapiro’s side had fabricated the deaths in an effort to blame the health secretary. He also accused Democrats of using tactics similar to those employed during the pandemic to counter critics and encourage vaccination.
“The performance was a replay of the Democrats’ Covid playbook: fear-mongering, misinformation, finger-pointing, and the weaponization of infectious disease fears for political gain,” Kennedy wrote on social media.
As of Monday, top US health officials and government agencies were not including the two recent measles-associated deaths in their official counts. Kennedy also gave an incorrect number of measles deaths during a recent interview with Fox News.
Debra Houry, a former CDC chief medical officer, and Demetre Daskalakis, a former director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, criticized, in a piece for Stat News, the way health and administration officials have turned deadly diseases into political talking points to be debated.
“Chicken noodle soup and vitamin A are not substitutes for vaccination, as the secretary of health claimed in 2022 while standing in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the epicenter of the current outbreak,” the pair wrote. “The best way to protect children is neither complicated nor new: provide clear information and make it easier for families to get vaccinated.”
