Trump officials cast doubt on Pennsylvania measles death claims

Top Trump administration health officials are openly questioning the circumstances of two deaths that Pennsylvania officials attributed to measles.

“We don’t know exactly what happened in Pennsylvania yet,” Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said in an interview Thursday on Fox Business.

“We don’t know if the children died from measles or had another condition that was already attacking them and they happened to get measles at the same time,” Oz said.

Oz was the latest administration official to cast doubt on the accuracy of statements from Pennsylvania authorities, who announced Tuesday two unvaccinated people in Lancaster County died from “measles-associated” conditions.

On Wednesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggested the deaths might have been completely made up by an aide to Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) to score political points.

“The deaths may even have been altogether fabricated by one of the Governor’s hopeful staffers,” Kennedy wrote on social platform X in part of an escalating online feud touched off by remarks Shapiro made at a Tuesday press conference, where he decried vaccine misinformation coming from the Trump administration and Kennedy specifically.

“Governor Shapiro’s unseemly rush to Lancaster County to convene a national press conference and his giddy delight in announcing two measles deaths was a morose commentary on the contemporary political dialogue,” Kennedy wrote.

During a Wednesday press conference in Tampa, Fla., Kennedy said Shapiro’s office was refusing to provide details to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). He blamed the Biden administration for declining childhood vaccination rates and said the Trump administration was rebuilding trust in the country’s public health authorities.

The official X account of the CDC, meanwhile, doubled down on Kennedy’s skepticism.

“We appreciate Secretary Kennedy’s efforts to clarify conflicting information from Pennsylvania officials about whether the two reported deaths were caused by measles. CDC is working to determine what actually occurred,” the agency said Thursday .

“These discrepancies raise important questions, particularly because the Governor’s Office has not provided CDC with information relevant to the outbreak and has declined our offers of assistance,” the CDC continued.

New CDC Director Erica Schwartz has not made any public remarks about measles since she started the job earlier this month.

The questions from Trump administration officials arose after Shapiro and Pennsylvania Health Secretary Debra Bogen divulged only minimal information during a press conference about the deaths.

Citing patient privacy concerns, Shapiro and Bogen said only that the patients were unvaccinated and from Lancaster County. They did not specify ages or whether they were members of the Amish community or any other religious group that may be more vaccine hesitant.

State officials later said one of the people who died was an infant with a positive measles test. They did not release details about the second person.

Lancaster County Commissioner Josh Parsons (R) said he was not aware of any reported deaths from measles and questioned where the governor got his information.

“As of right now, we have ZERO information that corroborates the idea that there were two measles deaths in Lancaster County,” Parsons wrote on X.

On Thursday, the Lancaster County coroner told local media his office has not confirmed any deaths associated with measles but is reviewing an infant death with a positive measles test.

According to the state health department, the term “measles-associated” is used when “laboratory or epidemiologic evidence of measles is present, but the disease may not be assessed by the medical certifier or coroner to be the immediate cause of death.”

The department also noted that not all deaths are referred to a coroner under Pennsylvania law and just one of the two measles-associated deaths is under investigation by the county coroner.