Pennsylvania conditions CDC emergency help on death count acknowledgment

State reverses course after resisting federal help

Pennsylvania’s Department of Health has formally requested an Epi-Aid — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s emergency epidemiological assistance program — to help contain the state’s worsening measles outbreak, attaching a condition that the agency publicly recognize four deaths the state has attributed to the virus.

State Health Secretary Debra Bogen outlined the condition in a Wednesday letter to CDC Director Erica Schwartz. “The CDC’s choice not to publicly recognize ⁠the deaths undermines our response,” Bogen wrote. “For this reason, if CDC is unable to transparently and accurately communicate information about those measles-associated deaths, the department will respectfully rescind our request for a CDC Epi-Aid.” The letter was reviewed by the Guardian and first reported by Reuters.

The conditional request marks a sharp reversal from the state’s earlier posture. Pennsylvania health officials had previously resisted CDC assistance, saying they were capable of managing the outbreak without federal help. On Wednesday, the state health department announced that 731 measles cases have been confirmed in 38 counties across the state so far this year, with four people having died from measles-related illness as of Tuesday.

The dispute over how to count those deaths has run for weeks. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has questioned whether deaths linked to the measles outbreaks since he took office were caused by the virus or by another condition. He instructed the CDC last month not to include Pennsylvania’s reported fatalities in the national measles death count — a move health experts called “highly unusual” and warned could lead the public to underestimate the dangers of measles. Kennedy has accused Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, of politicizing Pennsylvania’s outbreak and failing to seek out federal assistance.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration changed how the CDC counts measles deaths. The agency is now using data from the National Center for Health Statistics — a method used to track mortality trends over time. It is unclear why the change was made. The CDC did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment on Pennsylvania’s conditional request.

The political confrontation escalated Wednesday on Capitol Hill, where Bill Cassidy, the Republican chair of the Senate health committee, blamed the Trump administration’s vaccine-skeptical approach for the recent measles deaths in Pennsylvania.

The Pennsylvania outbreak is among the largest and deadliest in the country and is part of the US’s most severe measles resurgence in more than three decades, driven by increasing vaccine hesitancy.