The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is still secretly counting two measles deaths that were deleted from the agency’s public measles data—a deletion that occurred at the direct request of anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., according to two reports released today.
Early today, Reuters reported that Kennedy instructed new CDC director Erica Schwartz to delete the two deaths from the agency’s website. CDC staff had reportedly already reviewed information about the deaths and accepted the characterization that they were measles-related. Still, Schwartz deleted the deaths without objection, insiders told Reuters. According to previous reporting, the two deaths were added and then removed from the CDC’s website within hours on August 30.
The deaths were of a newborn and a child, and they were reported last week by health officials in Pennsylvania. The state’s ongoing measles outbreak has sickened 540 so far, including 119 just in the last week.
This afternoon, Inside Medicine reported that an internal CDC database still includes the two deaths, according to a screenshot that was reportedly verified by CDC staff. The database, called “One CDC Data Platform,” is accessible to state and local health officials as well as CDC employees.
Ars Technica reached out to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) about the discrepancy, but it did not immediately respond.
Historically, state and local health departments are the ones that make determinations about cases and deaths in an outbreak, and the CDC collects the reports for nationwide reporting.
Soon after Pennsylvania health officials announced the deaths, Kennedy got into a heated exchange with Governor Josh Shapiro, who criticized Kennedy’s anti-vaccine rhetoric and misinformation as helping to fuel such outbreaks. Kennedy fired back on social media, posting misinformation about the measles vaccine and claiming without evidence that the state may have “fabricated” the deaths.
When the CDC initially publicly reported the deaths on August 30, the agency included an unusual note saying that “Health departments make determinations about measles-associated deaths and share relevant information with CDC.” But now the two deaths have been deleted and what remains is an even more unusual note saying that the CDC was not reporting the deaths because “available information does not establish whether measles caused or contributed to the deaths or whether the individuals died from other causes while infected with measles.”
In an earlier statement to Ars Technica, HHS said that the two deaths in Pennsylvania “have not been confirmed based on the information currently available to CDC.” A spokesperson did not respond to a follow-up question about what information the CDC was lacking and/or awaiting from the state.
Pennsylvania’s state health department has said that it has provided the CDC with all the required information.
