A measles infection killed a six-week-old baby girl in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the county coroner confirmed to local press on Friday. County Coroner Stephen Diamantoni, a Republican first elected to the position in 2007, said the infant died at home, adding, “I believe it was the 18th of August.”
Diamantoni noted that the baby also had a genetic condition called Amish lethal microcephaly, in which infants are born with unusually small heads and underdeveloped brains. The disorder stems from a mutation in the SLC25A19 gene, which codes for a protein tied to energy-producing enzymes in the mitochondria and is considered important for brain development. Roughly 1 in 500 babies in the Old Order Amish population of Pennsylvania are born with the condition, and affected infants typically survive only about six months. Despite the presence of microcephaly, Diamantoni confirmed that measles was the cause of death.
Pennsylvania’s Two Measles Deaths
The death is one of two that the state health department reported last week as being caused by measles, according to a response the department sent Friday. The other involved a newborn boy. Also on Friday, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro shared a local news report about the coroner’s confirmation on social media, appearing to verify that it was one of the deaths announced by state health officials.
The two infant deaths became the center of controversy after anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed, without evidence, that the state may have “fabricated” them. The dispute was amplified when Diamantoni said he had not received the death reports at the time of the state’s announcement, seemingly reinforcing Kennedy’s false assertion. However, Lancaster County does not operate its own health department and depends on information forwarded by the state. Earlier in the week, Diamantoni said his office had only recently received the state report about the baby girl, describing the case at the time only as a “child.”
Kennedy’s Push to Alter CDC Data
During a heated exchange with Shapiro, Kennedy directed Erica Schwartz, the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to remove the deaths from the agency’s data. CDC staff had already accepted the deaths as measles-related and reported them accordingly. Schwartz reportedly removed them from the public website without objection, though a report on Thursday showed they remain included in an internal CDC database.
As of Friday afternoon, the deaths stayed excluded from the CDC’s public-facing data, with only an asterisk marking where 2026 measles deaths would appear. The page was updated Friday to change the meaning of that asterisk. It previously linked to a note stating in part that “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.” That note was replaced with one stating that the National Center for Health Statistics does not currently have any death records from 2026 indicating measles as the cause.
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Image: arstechnica.com
