As Questions Pile Up, Democrat Governor Won’t Clarify Whether Patients Died From Measles Or ‘With Measles’

Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro announced Tuesday the tragic deaths of two individuals with measles in Lancaster County, which is home to a large Amish population.

Media outlets around the country decried the deaths, the first attributable to the disease in the state in 35 years, and faulted Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a driving cause. But within a few hours, Lancaster officials began asking questions that complicated the media’s story.

Lancaster County Coroner Stephen Diamantoni said in an interview with a local reporter that his office had not handled any measles deaths, though it was investigating the death of an infant with a ruptured spleen who tested positive for measles. Furthermore, Republican Lancaster Country Commissioner Joshua Parsons began asking questions about the term of art used by public health officials to describe those deaths: “measles-associated.”

“I started asking questions. I called the coroner’s office. By law, with communicable diseases like measles, the coroner’s office must be alerted. I was shocked to hear from them that they have zero cases,” Parsons told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Kennedy said at a press conference on Wednesday that federal health officials had sought more information about the apparent discrepancy from Pennsylvania but had been met with stonewalling from Shapiro.

“CDC tried to get that information from the governor yesterday and the state is refusing to cooperate,” Kennedy said. “We are doing a better job than any country in the world controlling the measles outbreak. This is a worldwide epidemic.”

Now, the Pennsylvania Department of Health has conceded that there is uncertainty about whether or not the two individuals died from measles, or with measles — uncertainty not reflected in Shapiro’s public comments.

An investigation into one of the deaths remains ongoing. The county coroner never conducted an autopsy of the second case, the evidence suggests. The term “measles-associated” refers to deaths that may be traceable to a measles outbreak according to lab testing and contract tracing, the public health department indicated.

The health department “uses the term ‘measles-associated’ 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,” spokesperson Neil Ruhland said in a statement to the DCNF. “Accordingly, one of the two measles-associated deaths is under investigation by the county coroner — as confirmed by the Lancaster County Coroner, who stated publicly their office is reviewing an infant death with a positive measles test.”

According to Pennsylvania state law, a sudden and unexplained infant death would be investigated by 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, the health department challenged Parsons’ assertion that by law the county coroner would receive notice of every measles death.

“Not all deaths are referred to a coroner under Pennsylvania law,” Ruhland said.

The DCNF’s repeated requests for comment to Shapiro’s office and Diamantoni each did not receive replies.

Parsons said it may be true that the two individuals died from measles, but Shapiro and public health officials have not released enough details.

“We hear from the medical community all the time that they want to rebuild trust after COVID. This sort of thing doesn’t rebuild trust,” Parsons said.

The state public health department has confirmed 393 cases of measles across 29 counties in 2026. The epicenter of the outbreak is Lancaster County, where 177 cases have been diagnosed, LancasterOnline reports. Canada has seen approximately 1,117 cases while the European Union has seen 2,472 cases.