Healthcare

After An Infant Died Of A Ruptured Spleen, Gov. Josh Shapiro Said It Was Measles. The Coroner Says Otherwise.

Hush Naidoo Jade Photography/Unsplash

Two days after Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro indicated in a press conference that two residents had died from measles, questions have only grown louder about how public health officials tied the deaths to a measles outbreak.

State public health officials who vaguely described the deaths as “measles-associated” have not shared details about the cases with the public, and refuse to revisit their findings in light of a conflicting conclusion by the county coroner.

The deaths reportedly occurred in Lancaster County, where Republican Commissioner Joshua Parsons has led calls for more transparency from the Pennsylvania Public Health Department.

“I have sought to keep an open mind and be objective, but the evidence now leads to the conclusion that there is deception happening here,” Parsons said in a social media post.

The Lancaster County Forensic Center has only handled one autopsy involving measles in recent days, that of an hours-old newborn baby.

The autopsy did not determine measles to be the cause of death, Lancaster County Coroner Steve Diamantoni revealed in an interview with The Philadelphia Inquirer Wednesday night. The autopsy concluded the newborn died from laceration of the spleen, but did find measles antibodies were present in postmortem testing, Diamantoni told the paper. The death occurred during a home birth last Thursday, Diamantoni, an elected Republican, told WGAL.

Shapiro faulted Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for the deaths on Tuesday, stressing that both were in unvaccinated individuals, claims carried by news outlets around the country. But a newborn infant would not have been eligible for vaccination until he is 12 months old, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidance, or at earliest 6 months old under new state guidelines.

“This misinformation is taking a real toll on a parent’s job to protect their kids,” he said.

“Secretary Kennedy’s actions to dismantle public health agencies and his language that undermines confidence in vetted medical guidance are contributing to these kinds of outbreaks,” he later said on social media.

At the time of the Tuesday press conference, public health officials had not yet released the ages of the individuals or any other demographic details, citing privacy concerns. Public health officials clarified on Wednesday that one of the cases occurred in an infant only after Diamantoni revealed that information in press interviews.

Shapiro’s remarks surprised Diamantoni, since the state’s health department had already spoken with the coroner’s office in the lead-up to the press conference, TribLIVE, a local media outlet, reported. Diamantoni noted he has not been contacted directly about the deaths.

The governor’s office did not reply to repeated requests for comment.

The public health officials also defined the term “measles-associated death” to mean that they had concluded the death was from measles based on epidemiology and laboratory testing, and clarified that it does not necessarily mean that a forensic pathologist concluded the death was from measles based on an autopsy. But Shapiro’s public comments did not reflect this uncertainty.

Elizabeth Wolf, an expert in pediatric care at Virginia Commonwealth University, told the Daily Caller News Foundation that a key unknown is whether the spleen appeared swollen, pointing to a 1926 paper that described an enlarged spleen as a serious symptom of a measles infection.

Diamantoni said there were circulating measles antibodies, not “viremia” or live virus. That finding could signal measles may be unrelated to the death, Wolf said, but it’s impossible to say for sure without more details.

James Gill, chief medical examiner of the state of Connecticut, agreed that more clinical information is needed.

“Viral infections can rev up the spleen … which results in it getting larger and at risk for rupture. A newborn’s immune system is still maturing so I am not sure if that would happen in a newborn,” he said in an email to the DCNF. “Some of the tests for measles are very sensitive and it is possible it is picking up incidental maternal antibodies.”

Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security Professor Amesh Adalja described some of the data necessary to clarify matters: Whether the antibodies were transferred from the mother in placenta or were evidence of a new infection, whether PCR testing was done, and whether the mother had symptoms of a measles infection.

“The state announced a conclusion in language that declined to conclude anything,” he wrote in a Substack post.

Questions remain about the second death too. Diamantoni told LancasterOnline Tuesday that his office had not yet conducted an autopsy of the second individual. The patient may have traveled outside the county for treatment, he said. It’s also possible that public health officials have defined “measles-associated death” differently than the Lancaster County Forensic Center would.

Public health officials and Parsons have clashed over whether state law requires measles deaths be reported to the coroner.

Pennsylvania coroners investigate deaths “known or suspected to be due to contagious disease and constituting a public hazard,” per the website of the Pennsylvania State Coroners’ Association.

Nevertheless, Health Department spokesperson Neil Ruhland said that “not all deaths are referred to a coroner under Pennsylvania law” in a statement to the DCNF and other news outlets Wednesday. Still, Parsons has sought more information about both deaths.

“You cannot drop a bombshell like this and then essentially say all the information around it is top secret. The only way for government to have trust with citizens is through transparency and honesty. That is especially important since what happened during Covid,” the Republican county commissioner said in his social media post.

On Aug. 19, six days before Shapiro’s press conference on the matter, Democratic dark money group Protect Our Care released a poll that it said showed “strong aversion to Donald Trump’s executive order that demands the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine be broken up into separate shots.”

President Donald Trump signed an executive order (EO) on Aug. 10 giving families greater flexibility to space out childhood vaccines into separate medical visits and educating state lawmakers about the change.

The group polled 525 registered voters nationally in mid-August with a 69-31% split between text inquiries and by landline calls.

“When presented with 4 different factual proof points about Trump’s executive order, in all cases 50%–54% say it makes them view Republicans less favorably (44%–48% ‘much less’),” the group said.

That conclusion contrasts with polling revealed by the DCNF in May showing that 73% of voters expressed concern about childhood vaccine mandates while a whopping 90% of voters expressed concern about the pharmaceutical industry’s corrupting influence.