Experts alarmed by less transparent CDC as US measles deaths rise
Archived — this story has rotated out of today’s deck. It is kept here in full.
The gist
Pennsylvania's health secretary asked the CDC to acknowledge all measles deaths in the state.
The dispute centers on whether federal counts understate a measles resurgence.
Background
Erica Schwartz is the director of the CDC (the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), a post she took in August. Debra Bogen is secretary of the Pennsylvania health department, which has confirmed five measles deaths and more than 1,200 sickened in the state's worst outbreak in 35 years. The CDC has moved to a death-reporting process that typically takes weeks longer, and its dashboard lists three deaths while Pennsylvania has confirmed five. Experts have for months warned that many measles cases likely go unreported, and the US eliminated measles decades ago, making the current resurgence hard to size.
How it unfolded
- Oct 16, 2026Pennsylvania Health Secretary Debra Bogen writes to CDC director Erica Schwartz asking the agency to acknowledge all measles deaths in the state and explain why it changed its death-reporting procedures.
- Oct 18, 2026Infectious disease veterans call for a clearer federal message on measles, with the country past 4,000 cases and apparently already double last year's measles-related deaths.
- Oct 21, 2026Pennsylvania warns doctors of rising measles in pregnancy and congenital measles, identified for the first time in decades; a vaccinated person in DuPage County is reported to have a rare breakthrough infection after international travel.
- Oct 21, 2026The West Coast Health Alliance (California, Washington, Oregon, Hawaii) recounts in a letter that the CDC took two months to reply to its May request to validate a test able to diagnose 500 cases in eight hours.
- Oct 22, 2026The CDC adds a third measles death to its dashboard but, citing privacy laws, will not say whether it occurred in Pennsylvania or elsewhere; confirmed cases rise 8% in a week to 4,410, nearly double last year's count.
- Oct 22, 2026The CDC dashboard still lists three deaths despite five confirmed in Pennsylvania, and the agency has given no reason for the delay.
Who’s saying what
- Official
- Pennsylvania Health Secretary Debra Bogen says that by not acknowledging the deaths the CDC obscures the seriousness of the disease and the toll of measles across the US, and sows distrust between state and federal agencies.
- Caution
- CDC director Erica Schwartz, invoking the COVID-19 pandemic, says "definitions matter" and that people thought deaths were being added "to make this thing look worse than it is."
- Expert
- Demetre Daskalakis, former director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, calls the CDC's second-guessing of Pennsylvania's death adjudication atypical.
- Analysts
- Experts say there are no privacy concerns in naming the state where the third death occurred and that the information matters to the public as the outbreak accelerates.
- Caution
- Adriane Casalotti of NACCHO (a national association of local health departments) says local health departments are overwhelmed by the scope of cases and that federal messaging has hindered anti-measles efforts.
Still unverified
Experts say the outbreak is larger than official data suggests, but how big it is remains unclear; officials are also investigating a sixth death reported by a local coroner in Pennsylvania.