Pennsylvania’s health department said on Thursday it had begun requesting emergency federal support for one of the country’s largest and deadliest measles outbreaks, on condition that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention publicly recognize four measles-associated deaths reported by the state.
Debra Bogen, the state’s secretary of health, set out the condition in a letter sent Wednesday to CDC director Erica Schwartz, seeking the emergency assistance known as an Epi-Aid.
“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 outbreak has become the center of a standoff between US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat. Kennedy has questioned whether deaths reported in US measles outbreaks since he took office were caused by the virus or another condition, and instructed the CDC not to include the Pennsylvania fatalities in the national measles death tally last month.
Disease experts called that intervention highly unusual and warned it could lead the public to underestimate the dangers of measles. Kennedy has accused Shapiro of politicizing the outbreak and of failing to seek federal help.
The state announced Wednesday that 731 measles cases have been confirmed across 38 counties so far this year. Four people had died from measles-related illness as of Tuesday. It is the worst US measles resurgence in more than three decades, driven by rising vaccine hesitancy.
The request reverses Pennsylvania’s earlier position, after officials had resisted CDC assistance on the grounds they could manage the outbreak without federal help.
On Wednesday, Bill Cassidy, the Republican chair of the Senate health committee, blamed the Trump administration’s vaccine-skeptical approach for the recent measles deaths in the state.