In 2000, the United States declared measles eliminated after a year without continued national transmission, thanks to high vaccination rates. This declaration constitutes a triumph of public health in the face of the virus, which is one of the most contagious in the world. Before vaccination, measles sickened 3 to 4 million people a year, sending nearly 50,000 people to the hospital, causing 1,000 cases of brain swelling and killing 400 to 500 people.
Amid falling vaccination rates nationwide and the spread of misinformation and anti-vaccine rhetoric, the virus has returned with a vengeance and the country’s elimination status is likely to be removed. Next week (November 10-13), a committee of infectious disease experts convened by the Pan American Health Organization, a regional office of the World Health Organization, will review data from 2025 and early 2026 to assess whether measles has re-established itself in the United States.
Politicized public health
Under the leadership of anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., many of the vaccine-preventable outbreaks have become political and controversial, including the definition and confirmation of deaths associated with measles. Amid the first deaths reported in Pennsylvania, Kennedy falsely suggested that state officials had “fabricated” the deaths and allegedly ordered the CDC to remove them from its national data.
The CDC then changed the way it counted measles deaths, abandoning a longstanding practice of reporting state-confirmed deaths. Now the CDC relies on federal death records, which take much longer to process and are not intended to provide real-time data during active outbreaks.
The seventh unconfirmed death in Pennsylvania is believed to be that of a 39-year-old woman in Franklin County; this was announced on October 12 by the county coroner’s office. At the time, the coroner explicitly said the death met the state’s definition of a measles-associated death. Under state criteria, a death is considered measles-associated if the person dies within 30 days of testing positive and has clinical signs of infection, with no other significant cause of death, such as a car accident.
Franklin County Coroner Jordan Conner described the death as “a probable acute cardiac event due to possible complications of measles” and noted that the woman had recently been diagnosed and treated for measles.
In an email exchange with Ars Technica on Thursday, the state health department said it “did not find any cases in Franklin County” that met the state’s criteria, but that “the investigation was not yet closed.” The Franklin County coroner did not respond to a request for comment on the discrepancy. The Philadelphia Inquirer filed a lawsuit seeking more information about the woman’s death, including her name, which was withheld by the coroner and sealed by a county judge.
This post has been updated to correct the name of the Franklin County coroner.
Gn Health
