An infant's death in Pennsylvania has now been definitively tied to measles. Lancaster County Coroner Stephen Diamantoni said Friday that a 6-week-old baby from the Amish community died at home on Aug. 18 after contracting the virus, which he listed as the cause of death. The child also had Amish lethal microcephaly, a rare genetic condition largely confined to that community and typically fatal within a few months, the Washington Post reports. That disorder, Diamantoni said, left the baby "very susceptible to severe illness and death" once measles triggered respiratory problems and low oxygen.
Diamantoni said he doesn't know if this case is among the two measles-related deaths recently cited by Pennsylvania health officials, who described them as "measles-associated" but have released few specifics. He separately ruled that another infant who tested positive for measles died of a spleen laceration shortly after birth, not from the virus. State officials and US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are clashing over whether the deaths are being accurately represented, while the CDC has taken the unusual step of excluding the two state-reported deaths from its national tally.
Two former top CDC officials criticized the Trump administration's handling of the cases in Stat News. "Chicken noodle soup and vitamin A are not substitutes for vaccination, as the secretary of health claimed in 2022 while standing in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the epicenter of the current outbreak," they wrote, per the Guardian. "The best way to protect children is neither complicated nor new: provide clear information and make it easier for families to get vaccinated."
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