An unvaccinated resident in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, was confirmed to have died from measles, according to an announcement by the state Health Department Wednesday.
The death marks the fifth measles-associated death in the Keystone State this year, per state statistics. At least 943 measles cases have been reported within the state so far.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were, comparatively, far behind in recording national figures related to measles: As of Tuesday, the CDC reported just two measles deaths in the entire country.
That discrepancy has sparked a fierce debate between Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over the health agency’s decision not to rely on state data but instead to use mortality figures from the National Center for Health Statistics.
Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told Reuters Tuesday that the incongruous statistics could undermine public confidence and even lend ammunition to Kennedy’s anti-vaccine followers who would argue that the deaths were “invented or inflated.”
“To the public, that gap looks like either incompetence or concealment,” Adalja told the newswire.
Kennedy’s flippant and dismissive rhetoric regarding the measles vaccine has left many Americans confused as to his own stance on the jab. A survey published Tuesday by the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center found that just one in three Americans believe Kennedy recommends the MMR vaccine, despite his belated decision to support the scientifically backed shot on August 2.
Yet the measles situation has only become more grave as the country descends into the cold season. Pennsylvania authorities reported 114 new cases over the last week, a third of which were children under the age of 18. Overall, there have been 176 hospitalizations.
But those who are vaccinated against the virus stand a much better chance of remaining healthy: Less than one percent of the total number of cases involved people who were fully vaccinated against measles.
Measles was declared eradicated from the U.S. in 2000, a status determined by the lack of continuous transmission of the disease over a period of 12 months or more. That designation could be lost in November, when the U.S. is scheduled to undergo another review.
As of September 24, at least 3,659 measles cases were confirmed by the CDC—by far the highest count across the country since 1991.
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