Kennedy Called Pennsylvania's Measles Deaths Possibly Fabricated. State Officials Say They're Confirmed.

Since Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro announced the state's first measles deaths in 35 years on Aug. 25, the dispute over whether those deaths actually happened has turned into a public brawl between the governor and the nation's top health official.

The two deaths, an unvaccinated infant and an unvaccinated adult, came during an outbreak that had reached 393 confirmed cases across 28 counties in Pennsylvania, according to globalbiodefense. Both individuals tested positive for measles before they died, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Health.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wasn't buying it. On Aug. 26, he posted on X that the announcement "appears to have been premature, and the deaths may even have been altogether fabricated by one of the Governor's hopeful staffers," according to the Epoch Times. He pointed to Lancaster County Coroner Steve Diamantoni, who told The Philadelphia Inquirer his office had no record of a death it classified as measles.

What the coroner actually found

Diamantoni's account is more nuanced than a flat denial. His office did examine an infant who died shortly after birth, and the autopsy determined the primary cause of death was a ruptured spleen and internal hemorrhage, not measles directly, the Epoch Times reported. The pathologist who conducted the autopsy did not believe the death was related to measles, according to Diamantoni, and the office says it's still investigating what caused the ruptured spleen.

Globalbiodefense reported an additional detail: measles was detected in the infant's lung tissue and listed as a contributing condition on the death certificate, even though the coroner ruled the spleen injury as the primary cause. That's the kind of technical distinction, between a listed cause of death and a contributing condition, that state officials say justifies the term "measles-associated."

Pennsylvania's health department defines that label as covering deaths where "laboratory or epidemiologic evidence of measles is present, but the disease may not be assessed by the medical certifier or coroner to be the immediate cause of death." State officials also note that not all deaths get referred to a coroner under Pennsylvania law, which is why Kennedy's claim that state law requires all measles deaths go through the coroner doesn't fully hold up against the department's own account.

Dr. Debra Bogen, Pennsylvania's health secretary, said she personally reviewed the case files. "As a pediatrician with more than 30 years of caring for children, I have thoroughly reviewed the case investigation information and sadly can confirm that there were two recent measles-associated deaths in Lancaster County," she said, adding that the department's epidemiology team verified both people tested positive and reported the deaths to the CDC's measles response team on Aug. 25.

The phone call

According to Shapiro's account, relayed by NPR and globalbiodefense, he called Kennedy asking him to jointly encourage vaccination and push back on misinformation. Instead, Shapiro says, Kennedy launched into a tirade about fetal tissue in vaccines and blamed the prior administration for declining vaccination rates.

The fetal-tissue claim is false. The American Academy of Pediatrics states plainly that MMR vaccines do not contain fetal cells. Kennedy has offered a different framing of the same call, attributing falling vaccination rates to COVID-era lockdowns eroding public trust in institutions, a claim about the source of vaccine hesitancy rather than a defense of the fetal-tissue statement itself.

Kathleen Sebelius, who held Kennedy's job under President Obama, told NPR that Kennedy spending the week at events on regenerative farming, childhood fitness and school nutrition while measles cases climbed nationwide was "a very intentional refusal to confront both the spread of measles throughout the country, but also the effectiveness of vaccines." She called his response "baffling."

HHS did not respond to NPR's request for comment on whether Kennedy recommends unvaccinated people in outbreak areas get the MMR shot. In a statement to Newsweek, HHS and the CDC offered condolences to Pennsylvania communities and said "the MMR vaccine provides the most effective protection against measles and helps prevent its spread," a message that stands in tension with Kennedy's own public comments questioning the vaccine.

The bigger number

Whatever gets resolved about the two Pennsylvania cases, the national trend is not in dispute. Newsweek reports five confirmed measles deaths since 2025, three CDC-confirmed in 2025 and the two Pennsylvania deaths in 2026 that the CDC has not yet formally confirmed. From 2000 to 2020, the U.S. recorded exactly three measles deaths total. The CDC has logged 2,777 measles cases nationwide this year, the highest annual total in more than 35 years, according to Newsweek.

Noel Brewer, a public health professor at UNC's Gillings School, told Newsweek that "measles is a runaway train with no end in sight" and called for a national vaccination education campaign. Jennifer Nuzzo of Brown University's Pandemic Center said the current toll is "sadly unsurprising given the uncontrolled spread of measles in the U.S. for the last year and a half," tying it directly to declining MMR coverage rather than to any single data dispute in Lancaster County.

The open question is whether the CDC will formally confirm the two Pennsylvania deaths, and whether Lancaster County's coroner ever determines what caused the infant's ruptured spleen. Neither has happened as of this reporting.