HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania’s Department of Health says measles has killed five people in the state. ABC News reports six, counted by local health officials. The CDC’s national measles page, updated Friday, lists two deaths for the entire country.
The sixth is a 39-year-old unvaccinated woman from Franklin County, whose death the state is still investigating. A spokesperson for the county coroner’s office put the primary cause at a “probable acute cardiac event due to possible complications of the measles,” NBC News reported on Monday, and the state said it “is conducting a thorough review of the reported death.” That review sits inside a standoff with the CDC over which deaths count, one that has run since the state announced its first deaths in late August.
Pennsylvania has a rule. The CDC is still writing one. The state calls a death measles-associated if it came within 30 days of symptom onset, with clinical evidence of infection and a positive lab test, NBC reported. The CDC’s page says only that it is working with the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists “to develop a standardized case definition for deaths due to measles.” It does not say where its two deaths occurred.
The caseload is not waiting for the argument. The state counted 1,260 confirmed cases in 43 counties on Friday, 38 more than on Wednesday, with 238 people hospitalized, the Department of Health said. Nationally, ABC reported that 4,410 cases have been confirmed, and that about 96 percent were among people who are unvaccinated or whose vaccination status is unknown.
Federal help is coming to Pennsylvania’s measles outbreak. A CDC spokesperson said in a statement that “Pennsylvania has formally requested CDC assistance through the Epi-Aid program,” ABC News reported.
Paul Offit, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told NBC News the confirmed count falls well short. “I think we’re probably closer to 6,000 cases,” he said, when the state had confirmed 1,136.
Which two deaths sit in the federal count is a question the CDC’s page does not answer, and the state has not said whether the Franklin County death will join its five.
