The Trump administration’s top health official pushed his newly installed CDC director to strip two confirmed measles deaths from the agency’s public tally, according to sources familiar with the situation.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who had publicly questioned whether measles actually contributed to the deaths even after Centers for Disease Control and Prevention staffers had already accepted the state of Pennsylvania’s own determination that it did, urged CDC Director Erica Schwartz to do it, Reuters reported.
Schwartz, who was only confirmed to the role in early August, agreed with Kennedy’s directive and carried it out without objection, the three sources said.
The dispute erupted into a public spat between Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist, and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, with each accusing the other of politicizing the state’s outbreak. Pennsylvania has reported 540 measles cases this year.
Georges Benjamin, chief executive of the American Public Health Association and Maryland’s former secretary of health, called the CDC’s move highly unusual. “The secretary had no business interfering in the normal process,” Benjamin said. “He has an anti-vaccine agenda and he’s using this to play out his anti-vaccine agenda.”
A Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson, Grace Davis Jamison, told Reuters the agency had simply “requested details necessary to determine whether measles caused or contributed to the deaths,” citing conflicting reports between county and state officials. She declined to address Kennedy’s or Schwartz’s specific roles.
Pennsylvania notified the CDC of the two measles-associated deaths, saying only that both individuals were unvaccinated.
According to a Pennsylvania official close to Shapiro, the CDC initially raised no objections and even supported the state’s response.
Kennedy called Shapiro directly to offer federal help, and Shapiro said he thanked him while noting the state already had an aggressive response underway. Shapiro also told Kennedy that his past rhetoric had spread misinformation with “a negative impact on communities across America.”
The following day, Kennedy went on social media to accuse Shapiro of stonewalling the CDC and suggested the deaths may have been “altogether fabricated by one of the Governor’s hopeful staffers.”
He later claimed the Lancaster County coroner had no record of any measles deaths, despite state law requiring such reporting.
When the CDC finally updated its measles data page days later, the Pennsylvania deaths were missing. In their place was a new asterisk reading, “At this time, available information does not establish whether measles caused or contributed to the [Pennsylvania] deaths or whether the individuals died from other causes while infected with measles.”
Pennsylvania’s health department says it has “provided all required epidemiological data to the CDC.” The agency, meanwhile, has not said what additional evidence it needs, and it is not coordinating with the state on any further investigation.
Kennedy has spent years arguing vaccines pose more danger than the diseases they prevent, contradicting decades of research showing the measles, mumps, and rubella shot provides 97 percent protection against infection. Measles cases nationwide are now at their highest point in more than three decades.
The CDC and HHS have been contacted for comment.
