Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on Wednesday that officials in Pennsylvania may have made up deaths that they described as associated with measles.
The Pennsylvania Department of Health and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said on Wednesday that Pennsylvania had recorded the first deaths related to measles in 35 years.
"The announcement appears to have been premature, and the deaths may even have been altogether fabricated by one of the Governor's hopeful staffers," Kennedy wrote in a post on X. "The Lancaster County Coroner says that it has no record of any measles deaths. State law requires that all measles deaths be reported to the coroner."
Lancaster County Coroner Steve Diamantoni told news outlets and a county commissioner that his office had not handled any deaths from measles. The office did see an infant who died shortly after birth from spleen laceration, and an autopsy determined that the primary cause of death was the laceration, Diamantoni told the Philadelphia Inquirer.
The pathologist who conducted the autopsy did not feel the death was related to measles, the coroner said. The office, which declined to comment to The Epoch Times, is still investigating the cause of the ruptured spleen.
Kennedy also told reporters in an unrelated press conference in Florida that Pennsylvania officials had not provided information about the deaths to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"We're trying to figure out ... who those deaths were and whether they actually happened," he said.
Both individuals who died tested positive for measles prior to their deaths and were not vaccinated, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Health. One was an infant, the agency said, pointing to Diamantoni's comments.
The agency said it uses the term "measles-associated" for deaths "when 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."
Dr. Debra Bogen, Pennsylvania's health secretary, said, "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, which were reported to the CDC's measles response team early Tuesday morning."
Pennsylvania officials have not disclosed any additional details about the second death beyond the person testing positive for measles and being unvaccinated. Bogen and her department did say that not all deaths are referred to a coroner under Pennsylvania law.
State law says that any deaths "known or suspected to be due to contagious disease and constituting a public hazard" shall be investigated by a coroner.
State officials also encouraged people to take the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine after announcing the deaths.
"This illness and death from measles is completely preventable," Shapiro told a briefing in Lancaster on Wednesday.
The minimum age for the MMR vaccine is one year, according to the CDC, although officials in Pennsylvania and some other states allow vaccination as early as six months of age for babies in measles-outbreak areas.
The deaths were the first associated with measles reported in the United States this year. Three were reported in 2025. Local doctors said those deaths were due to measles, but Kennedy has said the people were already sick, including a girl who was already suffering from mononucleosis.
Lancaster County Commissioner Josh Parsons, a Republican who first highlighted comments from the county coroner, said in a post on X that the information about the infant's death showed it was with, not from, measles. He also said that state officials should release information on the other death that was described as associated with measles.
"The people of Lancaster County deserve to have transparency over whether there were actually two measles deaths or not," Parsons said.