CDC adds 1 measles death to US tracker, while Pennsylvania reports disease killed 4

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) added one measles death to its online database , marking the first fatal case the agency has acknowledged tied to the country’s 2026 outbreak.

While CDC’s website does not list when and where the death occurred, the update follows weeks of criticism from Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) over the omission of his state’s four reported measles-related deaths from the agency’s tracker.

Pennsylvania first reported two infant deaths tied to the illness in late August and added two more in mid-September, while the CDC’s update came Wednesday, The Washington Post reported . These fatal cases come amid a record-setting year for measles in the country, with the number of reported infections reaching a 35-year high.

The past exclusion of Pennsylvania’s measles-related deaths from the CDC’s platform sparked a public feud between Shapiro and Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The Democratic governor said last week that Kennedy “doesn’t believe that measles is an issue,” accusing the HHS leader of not being “grounded in reality.”

A footnote on the CDC measles dashboard states the public health agency is “aware” of other “probable measles cases” but that the website only includes confirmed cases. The agency has historically relied on state health departments to confirm cases within their jurisdictions.

HHS spokesperson Grace Davis Jamison said in a statement to The Hill that the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) verified and notified the CDC of the new measles-related death, though she did not say when the notification occurred.

“Through its standard process, NCHS verified that the death occurred and that measles was listed as the underlying cause of death,” Jamison said. “This is now reflected on the CDC website.”

Jamison added that the CDC is working with the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists “to develop a standardized case definition for deaths due to measles” to create “consistent classification and reporting” of these deaths.

Earlier this month, Kennedy acknowledged that measles caused the death of an infant in Pennsylvania after a Lancaster County coroner confirmed a cause of death. He accused Shapiro of having “politicized” deaths tied to measles in the commonwealth.

The CDC has reported 3,471 measles infections across the nation, including 745 in Pennsylvania, as of Sept. 17. Pennsylvania’s health department reported 835 cases this year, including 111 in the past week, according to a Wednesday update.