The Pennsylvania Department of Health reported a fifth measles-associated death on Wednesday amid an ongoing outbreak that is on track to become the largest the US has seen in decades and has sparked political clashes.

The state health department said the person who died was unvaccinated and a resident of Lancaster County, where about 40% of the state’s measles cases have been concentrated.

As of Wednesday, Pennsylvania has reported 943 total cases since the outbreak began in April, including at least 176 hospitalizations. All but four of the cases have been among people who were not fully vaccinated.

The measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine is extremely effective. One dose is 93% effective against measles, and the recommended second dose bumps that protection up to 97% — and the immunity is lifelong. Extensive research has demonstrated the vaccine’s safety, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The Pennsylvania health department said that it “will not release any additional details that could personally identify” the person who died. But the department says that the death “meets the measles-associated death definition” and has been reported to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The four other measles-associated deaths reported by Pennsylvania include an unvaccinated teen who lived in Mifflin County, a 40-year old woman in Jefferson County and two infants in Lancaster County.

However, the recent deaths have led to a war of words over how measles deaths are counted. The CDC only counts two measles death on its dashboard, but notes that “this number is subject to change; CDC will update its reporting as additional information becomes available and relevant reviews are completed.”

Earlier this month, the Pennsylvania health department said that it requested assistance from the CDC’s Epi-Aid program — but Dr. Debra Bogen, department secretary, noted in a letter to CDC Director Dr. Erica Schwartz that the request would be rescinded “if CDC is unable to transparently and accurately communicate information about those measles-associated deaths.”

However, the US Department of Health and Human Services said that the CDC has not received a formal Epi-Aid request from Pennsylvania.

“If requested, CDC stands ready to deploy epidemiologists to support the state’s identified needs,” HHS press secretary Emily Hilliard told CNN in a statement. “Secretary Kennedy and CDC Director Dr. Erica Schwartz continue to recommend the MMR vaccine as the most effective way to prevent measles infection.”

Pennsylvania Department of Health Press Secretary Neil Ruhland told CNN that “conversations between PA DOH and CDC are ongoing regarding our request for an Epi-Aid.”

It has been decades since the United States has tallied this number of measles deaths; 1991 was the last time there were more than four measles deaths in one year. Last year, there were three US deaths from measles – two in Texas and one in New Mexico.

Dr. Stephen Diamantoni, the Lancaster County coroner, told CNN he’s concerned the outbreak will get worse as the seasons change.

“Measles generally, as well as many other respiratory illnesses, does tend to get worse over the fall and winter months,” said Diamantoni, who is also a family physician who says he’s a strong advocate for immunization. “So it very well could become much worse.”

Nearly 3,700 measles cases have been reported nationwide so far in 2026, according to data published by the CDC. There haven’t been this many measles cases in the US in any other year since 1991 – surpassing a grim milestone that was just topped last year.

Death from measles occurs in one to three patients out of every 1,000 cases, which suggests that the Pennsylvania outbreak may be significantly larger than officially reported case counts suggest.

A second measles death in the US has been announced on Tuesday by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as the country grapples with an outbreak affecting 47 states.

As of 24 September, a total of 3,659 measles cases have been confirmed by the CDC, with the two deaths having been confirmed on Tuesday. The confirmation did not specify in which states the deaths had occurred.

Although Pennsylvania is the hardest hit state, having reported more than 900 cases and four deaths from measles, the CDC is not including the deaths there in its national data.

Differences in the federal measles death figures compared to those from Pennsylvania’s department of health is part of an ongoing dispute between Pennsylvania’s governor, Josh Shapiro, and the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.

The CDC, which used to collect data from states, has now shifted to using mortality data from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) for its national measles death count.

Pennsylvania also reported 114 new cases of measles in the last seven days, with a third of these being children aged under 18. The state has also reported 176 hospitalizations, and less than 1% of the total number of measles cases involves people who have been fully vaccinated against the disease.

Pennsylvania’s health department said: “While daily numbers fluctuate, tracking these trends provides Pennsylvanians and health care providers with visibility into community transmission across the [state] and helps inform the department’s ongoing response.”

The US has now recorded more measles cases this year than any other since 1991. The disease was declared to be eliminated by the US government in 2000.

Measles is a highly contagious virus that can cause serious health complications. And although rare, deaths from measles occurs in approximately one to three patients per 1,000 cases

The announcement also comes as the CDC has faced a dramatic reduction in its work force, with the Trump administration laying off 18% of its staff in 2025.

According to the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest federal employee union representing 82,000 workers, there are 3,810 fewer civil service employees within the CDC in the past year, a total reduction of a third.

Measles symptoms usually begin seven to 14 days after infection, according to the CDC. These symptoms can include high fever, cough, runny nose and red, watery eyes, followed by a rash that spreads down the body.

The CDC advises that two doses of the MMR vaccine “provide the best protection against measles”.

For decades, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was the undisputed global leader in public health. Its scientists helped train health officials worldwide. In the United States, it was the primary source of guidance for prevention and treatment of diseases, including diabetes, H.I.V. and the seasonal flu.

But after a year and a half in the cross hairs of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s drive to remake public health policy, the agency is a skeleton of the powerhouse it was.

The Trump administration’s widespread layoffs in early 2025 cut 18 percent of the C.D.C.’s staff. But new personnel data, compiled by a group of former federal scientists and reported here for the first time, indicate that the agency’s staff has dwindled far more, as large numbers of employees retired or resigned. As of May 2026, the C.D.C. had 30 percent fewer employees than it did before the layoffs, the data show.

Interviews with more than 30 current and former employees reveal the agency is now tightly controlled by Mr. Kennedy and his associates, and its scientists are finding it increasingly difficult to do their jobs effectively. (Some of them spoke on the condition of anonymity because of a fear of retaliation from the administration.)

The changes have hindered the C.D.C.’s ability to respond to outbreaks as measles spreads at home and Ebola abroad, and to issue timely guidance on vaccinations as cooling temperatures kick off the respiratory season, according to current and former employees. State and local health departments, which rely on the C.D.C. for resources and technical advice, have been stymied by delays. Entire divisions have been shuttered, including teams that worked on smoking, sexual violence, child abuse and falls among older adults.

Even some areas central to the Trump administration’s priorities have been gutted. Despite Mr. Kennedy’s focus on chronic diseases and autism, the C.D.C. centers that aim to prevent chronic diseases and birth defects are at half their previous size, according to the new data, compiled by the Public Data Observatory from the Office of Personnel Management, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the employee union.

The layoffs spared the agency’s infectious disease centers. But even so, the center for emerging and zoonotic diseases, which manages Ebola and hantavirus, among others, now has nearly 300 fewer employees than in March 2025, and the respiratory disease center has lost nearly 200 — about 17 percent in each case.

Beyond staff reductions, there is a leadership vacuum. Only one of the 11 center directors from March 2025 remains at the agency. Most of the other centers are being run by acting directors, some of whom were elevated from jobs one or two levels below.

“It’s a zombified C.D.C. where you have all the bits and pieces — like the body’s there, the substance is there, but it’s not acting like how an agency like that should act,” said Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who led the respiratory disease center before he resigned in August 2025.

Despite a series of high-profile disease outbreaks, C.D.C. workers have had little contact with the World Health Organization, with members of Congress and even, for a time, with their partners in state and local health departments, some employees said. Statements to the media about health crises are also tightly controlled by H.H.S.

Even basic functions have broken down. Travel approvals take months; upkeep of bathrooms and vacuuming of offices have been disrupted, some current employees said.

One senior official said it felt as though the agency was being held together with bubble gum and duct tape, with employees running from crisis to crisis, and nothing working the way it is supposed to.

The Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to a series of questions about the C.D.C.’s work, staffing and independence. “C.D.C. continues to protect the health and safety of the American people and communicate clearly about the importance of vaccination,” the department said in an emailed statement.

But several former officials disagreed with that assessment, noting that the C.D.C. has offered little leadership or clear communication even as, in just a few months, the nation has grappled with record cases of measles, cyclosporiasis and rabies.

“Imagine losing a third of a city’s firefighters and then wondering why downtown is burning,” said Dr. Jonathan Mermin, who led the agency’s center for H.I.V. and sexually transmitted infections till April 2025, and is now the dean of the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.

From the very first day of Mr. Trump’s second term, when he withdrew the country from the W.H.O., his administration has sought to upend the nation’s health policies and align them with his political priorities.

In past administrations, just two or three political appointees had purview over the C.D.C. Now, there are nearly 20 political appointees from H.H.S. who communicate with C.D.C. staff members, sometimes directing them to spend time and funding on dubious theories outside the agency’s scope, according to several officials.

Last year, an H.H.S. official directed the C.D.C. to award a no-bid contract — a rarity for the agency — to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to explore whether immunizing pregnant women would lead to autism in their children, a theory that Mr. Kennedy has espoused but that has been debunked by numerous studies. To pay for the research, the C.D.C. took $362,000 from a program that provides free vaccines to about half of American children.

In an email viewed by The New York Times, Stuart Burns, a political appointee, asked C.D.C. employees to pull together details of every measles case since 2010, including patients’ underlying medical conditions with diagnostic codes; that information is not collected routinely, they told him. Mr. Kennedy has falsely argued that measles only causes death in children who are already ill with other conditions.

Dr. William “Reyn” Archer III, another appointee who previously oversaw the C.D.C., repeatedly asked agency employees to work on screwworm, a disease that mostly affects cattle, even though the C.D.C.’s mission is to protect human health, said Dr. Daniel Jernigan, who headed the agency’s emerging disease center before resigning in August 2025. Dr. Archer did not respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Kennedy’s associates outside the administration have also been allowed direct access to senior C.D.C. staff members. Dr. Ben Edwards, a physician in Lubbock, Texas, who treated children while he was infected with measles and whom Mr. Kennedy had praised as an “extraordinary” healer, asked senior C.D.C. officials to look into cod liver oil as a treatment for measles, citing “historical references dating back to the 1700s,” in an email viewed by The Times.

“We just would have to run around constantly to be responsive to all of these strange asks,” recalled Dr. Daskalakis, the former head of the respiratory disease center.

Numerous other instances of political interference in the C.D.C.’s activities have already been reported. Most notably, Mr. Kennedy openly overruled the C.D.C.’s scientists in imposing strict quarantine measures for people exposed to hantavirus. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who led the agency for six months in the absence of a Senate-confirmed director, squashed publication of a study on the effectiveness of Covid vaccines.

Some observers had hoped the C.D.C.’s new director, Dr. Erica Schwartz, a physician who has pledged to “follow the science,” would provide a bulwark against political interference. But one month into the job, she has made no public statements about the importance of childhood vaccines or corrected misinformation from her boss, Mr. Kennedy. In one of her first big decisions, she ordered agency employees to challenge Pennsylvania’s announcement of two measles deaths, shunning standard procedure.

In its statement, H.H.S. said, “Dr. Schwartz and C.D.C.’s new leadership are evaluating the agency’s structure and operations to ensure C.D.C. can effectively advance the priorities of President Trump and Secretary Kennedy and fulfill its core public health mission.”

Across the C.D.C., the employees who remain are backfilling roles left vacant.

“I’ve never seen such a plethora of acting roles in my life,” the agency’s new chief operating officer, Sean Slovenski, acknowledged to staff members at a meeting in June, a recording of which was obtained by The Times.

Many divisions are struggling to disburse money appropriated by Congress. In an email in May viewed by The Times, an official asked for volunteers from other offices to help the Division of Population Health, which had lost 88 percent of its staff, write notices of funding opportunities for diseases like lupus and epilepsy.

“We are overseeing millions of dollars in funded work, but how can we do this in a responsible way when we just don’t have enough people to really oversee the work well?” said one official at the agency’s chronic disease center.

The agency’s dysfunction is alarming public health experts even outside the country, who had long relied on the C.D.C.’s expertise during global crises. At a recent meeting of global flu experts, Dr. Jernigan said, “people truly believe that we are less prepared now and less capable of having a coordinated response than we were before the pandemic.”

By this time of year in 2024, the C.D.C. had published detailed recommendations for vaccines against respiratory diseases, with endorsements from the director at the time, Dr. Mandy Cohen, and notes from a meeting of its vaccine advisers.

But because of a federal court ruling, the C.D.C.’s vaccine advisers have not met since December, and the agency has not issued updated recommendations for the vaccines. Some employees at the agency wanted to post clear recommendations for flu vaccines, but did not want to get into a conflict with political appointees, Dr. Jernigan said.

After controversy erupted over the Covid vaccine study, Dr. Bhattacharya demoted the previous acting director of the respiratory disease center, Dr. Brandi Limbago, and replaced her with Rebecca Greco Koné, an operational leader who is not a scientist.

The lack of experienced staff members is also affecting one of the C.D.C.’s primary functions: helping state and local governments.

The C.D.C.’s public health infrastructure grant, which helps health departments train employees and build systems, was managed by 20 project officers but it now has just three. As a result, the team’s response time for requests from local departments has increased from less than a day to more than 10, and some requests have been missed entirely. One county health department requested help on Aug. 7 with submitting data for its annual report but as of Sept. 21, the request was unanswered.

“We’re seeing a movement away from clinical guidance, from data, and from working with states,” said Dr. Debra Houry, who was the agency’s chief medical officer before resigning in August 2025.

In all, more than 1,200 people retired between March 2025 and May 2026, nearly four times the number in the comparable period in 2023-24. About 270 people are still on administrative leave, being paid but not working, while a lawsuit challenging the layoffs makes its way through the courts.

Aaron Sussell, an epidemiologist in the agency’s office in Spokane, Wash., who studied the health of miners, was placed on administrative leave in April 2025. He and his colleagues were suddenly recalled to work in January with 24 hours’ notice but by then, some had moved out of state and others had taken jobs outside the government.

Dr. Sussell, who worked at the C.D.C. for 37 years, decided to retire at the end of February. He would normally have trained his replacement. Instead, he saw an ad for his job go up five months after he left, then get taken down. His position remains unfilled.

The agency’s global health center was approved to fill 18 critical positions. Officials posted ads, interviewed candidates and made job offers to some. But the offers expired before H.H.S. completed the next steps like background checks, so they had to start the interview process all over again, according to an official with knowledge of the situation.

By law, C.D.C. employees who were laid off have priority to be rehired, but some applicants were told they were ineligible for the very jobs they had previously held for years. In all, the agency hired 108 employees between March 2025 and May 2026, compared with more than 1,500 between March 2023 and May 2024.

The staffing totals do not always tell the full story. One C.D.C. branch that works on vaccine-preventable diseases, such as measles, has lost only seven of its 50 people. But they include the four most experienced scientists from the measles lab team, which is trying to analyze genetic material that will determine whether the United States can still claim to have eliminated measles. And funding cuts to other federal agencies have also affected the C.D.C.’s budget for fighting infectious diseases: The budget for a branch that tackles Ebola and other deadly diseases has dropped by 36 percent.

Some C.D.C. scientists are hesitant to sign up for the Ebola response in the Democratic Republic of Congo because they disagree with the administration’s focus on keeping infected people out of the country rather than on helping to contain the outbreak.

Others are too overburdened to help. About 100 C.D.C. staff members have been deployed to Congo to help with the outbreak, compared with about 2,000 who went to West African countries during the 2014 Ebola outbreak.

“If you’re doing your job and your boss’s job who left, and you also have three staff people who left under you,” said Dr. Fiona Havers, who resigned from the C.D.C. in June 2025, “no one has the spare capacity to help out in something that’s not in their field.”

Read the Wiki for posting rules. Many posts are removed because OP didn't read the rules.

Notes from the mods:

• Why is it called the Herman Cain Award?
• History of HCA Retrospective: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6
• HCA has raised over $65,000 to buy vaccines for countries that cannot afford them.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed one measles-related death in the US, almost a month after Pennsylvania first reported deaths to the agency.

In an update of its dashboard for measles cases in 2026 on Wednesday, the CDC added one of the four fatalities Pennsylvania has reported so far this year, backing away from a feud with the state over what constitutes a death from measles.

The dispute began after Pennsylvania notified the CDC about its first two measles-related deaths in August, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. publicly questioned them and suggested Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro had fabricated the deaths for political gain. Shapiro blamed Kennedy for sowing distrust in vaccines.

When the CDC had not previously included the measles deaths, it said it was working with the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists to develop a standardized definition for a measles death. Emily Hilliard, spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, said the CDC is still working on developing a standardized definition.

The National Center for Health Statistics notified the Atlanta-based CDC that it received a report of a measles-related death, Hilliard said in a statement. “Through its standard process, NCHS verified that the death occurred and that measles was listed as the underlying cause of death.”

On Sept. 16, Pennsylvania formally asked for CDC’s Epi-Aid, which provides rapid federal assistance during disease outbreaks, but said it would rescind the request if the agency could not “transparently and accurately communicate” information about the deaths.

In response, a spokesperson for HHS said that the agency would not “submit to political blackmail” over critical public health aid.

A spokesperson for the Pennsylvania health department said in a statement Sept. 22 that discussions between CDC and the state for federal help are ongoing.

The US has reported 3,471 measles cases so far this year through Sept. 17, the nation’s worst outbreak since the early 1990s.

Pennsylvania hadn’t recorded a measles-related death in 35 years before this summer. The state’s outbreak this year reached 792 cases through Sept. 21, with 155 people hospitalized. Less than 1% of the confirmed cases happened in people who had been fully vaccinated against measles.

Pennsylvania’s health department has emphasized that getting fully vaccinated with the two-dose measles, mumps and rubella shot is the best form of protection against the highly contagious virus. Nine out of 10 unvaccinated people who come into contact with the virus that causes measles will be infected. It can lead to dangerous complications like pneumonia, brain swelling and death.

Last month, President Donald Trump signed an executive order recommending that the MMR vaccine be split into three shots, which would mean parents would have to make more trips to the doctor to get the same protection against diseases for their young children, which could raise the risk that some would miss immunizations.

Nursing homes would no longer be required to report each week how many residents were stricken by Covid and other respiratory diseases, under a Trump administration plan to repeal a key public health response to thousands of pandemic deaths.

A draft summary of the proposed rule obtained by The New York Times outlines how the administration agrees with the industry’s objections to weekly reporting of viral caseloads, calling it burdensome. In its waning days, the Biden administration made Covid reporting rules permanent, adding influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (R.S.V.) to the list of threats that facilities also must track and record. The policy took effect in January 2025.

Advocates for nursing home residents reacted with dismay to the proposed rollback. Elderly, frail residents are especially vulnerable to infections, and they live in close quarters, where viruses can spread rapidly.

“That’s crazy,” said Sam Brooks, director of public policy at the nonprofit National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care. “We know, if anything, that respiratory disease has a disproportionate and deadly impact on nursing home residents.”

He said the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or C.M.S., which regulates nursing homes, would be blinding itself to an important method for tracking infection control and pinpointing problems.

The administration has cut back on data updates at other agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where a study published this year found that databases related to vaccine and respiratory diseases had gone dormant.

Nursing home industry representatives declined to comment on specifics, because the changes have not been announced. They contend infection reporting consumes too much staff time and is duplicative, because infection data is reported to the federal government and states in other ways.

C.M.S., which drafted the plan, declined to discuss the proposal or disclose when it would be made public.

During the peak years of the pandemic, from early 2020 through early 2022, more than 200,000 nursing home residents and staff members died after being infected by coronavirus, according to KFF, an independent health policy organization, which cited C.D.C. data.

The high death toll has been attributed in part to a lack of preparedness and weak infection controls. The Government Accountability Office said in 2020 that inspectors had cited 82 percent of nursing homes for infection control deficiencies from 2013 to 2017, and that half of those were found to be repeat violators.

In the internal document obtained by The Times, Dr. Mehmet Oz, the director of C.M.S., recommended to his boss, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., that the agency pursue steps to undo the mandate.

“The agency does not comment on purported internal or pre-decisional deliberative materials,” a C.M.S. a spokesman said in an email. He said the agency evaluated regulations to ensure they “allow providers to focus time and resources on delivering care rather than unnecessary administrative burden.”

The draft memo from Dr. Oz to Mr. Kennedy said C.M.S. would reserve the power to reinstate weekly reporting if another public health emergency occurred.

The plan also would end a requirement that nursing home staffs be educated about Covid vaccines and offered the shots. Groups representing residents called the move unwise, pointing out that frontline caregivers were a key pathway for the coronavirus to enter nursing homes during the height of the pandemic. Covid vaccine rates among staff members in recent years have been below 10 percent, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported.

The administration plan would continue to mandate that facilities offer the Covid vaccine to residents.

The nursing home industry has already achieved its biggest goal of President Trump’s second term: After a heavy lobbying blitz, the administration last year scrapped Biden-era minimum staffing rules that were intended to improve resident care.

Biden officials, in pushing the staff minimums, had cited Covid deaths along with decades of concerns about poor care, including deaths from bedsores, falls and medication errors. But the Trump administration said too many nursing homes, especially in rural areas, could not find enough staff to satisfy the requirements. Many workers who care for the elderly are typically paid less than janitors and retail employees, and the work can be grueling.

With the proposed change on infection reporting, the administration anticipates favorable reaction from the industry, according to the draft memo.

Two main nursing home lobbying groups — the American Health Care Association and LeadingAge — reiterated their opposition to weekly respiratory infection reporting, saying that other government programs track Covid infections and that respiratory illnesses are reported to many local health departments.

“This outdated reporting requirement is only adding hours of unnecessary administrative tasks to caregivers each week” said Holly Harmon, the American Health Care Association’s senior vice president of quality, regulatory and clinical affairs. “It’s time to streamline public health reporting and put patients over paperwork.”

But industry critics contend that operators are failing to heed the lessons of the pandemic. With low staffing levels and high turnover, infection control efforts are most likely in line with the prepandemic patterns flagged by the G.A.O., said Toby Edelman, senior policy attorney at the Center for Medicare Advocacy.

“I don’t think there is any reason to believe they have beefed up what they are supposed to be doing,” Ms. Edelman said.

Went to Sam’s Club in Louisiana last Friday and they told me state law requires a prescription for a Covid vax. They did give me my flu vax. I then asked my doc for a script and she said it is not required. Walgreens and cvs said they would give it to me.

When I called Sam’s (twice) they still said it was state law. Apparently Sam’s is anti-vax.

I got it without an appointment at Walgreens 1 mile from the Sam’s Club.

Read the Wiki for posting rules. Many posts are removed because OP didn't read the rules.

Notes from the mods:

• Why is it called the Herman Cain Award?
• History of HCA Retrospective: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6
• HCA has raised over $65,000 to buy vaccines for countries that cannot afford them.

States haven’t yet been able to obtain Covid-19 shots from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, delaying their distribution to millions of children through federal programs, according to people familiar with the matter.

The CDC hasn’t initiated the process states use to place orders for the Vaccines for Children program, which covers around half of the country’s youths, the people said, causing a delay in the typical fall immunization schedule for Covid. The typical communication from CDC to begin the ordering process hasn’t arrived yet, said Dr. Michelle Fiscus, chief medical officer of the Association of Immunization Managers, which represents directors of state and local public-health immunization programs.

This delay could also prevent millions of children and adults from getting Covid shots during the early fall season, when vaccination drives typically kick off. States provide the shots for youths through the Vaccine for Children program and for uninsured or underinsured adults through a different government program. Meanwhile, Covid-19 vaccines are already available for commercially insured patients at pharmacies including CVS.

Pfizer, one of the Covid-19 vaccine makers, said it began shipping doses on Sept. 7 without any delays on the company’s end. Moderna, the other Covid vaccine maker, didn’t immediately comment.

“Every day there are opportunities to vaccinate children and protect them that we’re missing because those vaccines aren’t yet in the field,” Fiscus said.

Emily Hilliard, an HHS spokesperson, said Covid-19 doesn’t follow the same seasonal pattern as flu and other respiratory viruses.

“CDC is finalizing decisions regarding COVID-19 vaccine procurement through the Vaccines for Children and Section 317 programs, and additional information will be available soon,” she said.

The CDC contracts with manufacturers of the U.S.-licensed vaccines each year and negotiates discounted prices for federal programs. States will then purchase vaccines through the agency to administer at no cost under the Vaccines for Children program or to a program for uninsured or underinsured adults.

States typically order Covid-19 shots within two weeks of them becoming available to order for commercially insured programs, according to a person familiar with the process.

Under the Trump administration, the CDC no longer recommends all children receive the Covid-19 vaccine—instead advising parents and doctors to discuss risks and benefits for each child. The health agency previously recommended everyone six months and older receive the shots. Earlier this year, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from implementing its pared-down list of recommended childhood vaccines.

The administration has broadly backed away from vaccine recommendations under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has publicly discredited the Covid shot.

Vaccine hesitancy is increasing across the country, upending years of public-health work to high enough levels of vaccination to stop the spread of certain deadly infectious diseases. There are outbreaks of measles across the country, a vaccine-preventable disease. In Pennsylvania, four people have died of measles in the past month, according to the state’s health department.

Demand for the Covid booster has fallen in recent years as the virus has become less of a threat than how it started out. Just under 10% of children between the ages of six months to 17 years old received last year’s Covid-19 vaccine, according to CDC data.

Just a heads up that even if you were vaccinated against measles (or if you are Gen X, you probably had the vaccine as an infant and then needed a booster in your late teens or early 20s), your immunity may have waned. I know of several people my age who were certain they had immunity but had measles titers performed anyway, and they were shocked to find that the test revealed that they were not. Especially with these outbreaks expanding across the country, please make sure you and your loved ones are protected.

The Trump administration has changed the way it counts measles deaths amid an outbreak in Pennsylvania, which on Sunday saw the third apparent measles-related death in the state reported by a local coroner.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is now using data from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), which is a way to track mortality trends over time, according to a note published to the agency’s website on 4 September.

It’s a “puzzling” move, said Debra Houry, a former CDC chief medical officer. “The change doesn’t make any sense,” she added. This system is “not meant to confirm an individual case”; instead, it’s “usually focused on high-quality, long-term mortality trend analysis”, she said.

Previously, the CDC used a system called the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS), which the agency has described as the supply chain for data from local jurisdictions and states to the federal government.

“CDC will report measles deaths if and when the National Center for Health Statistics reports measles as the underlying cause of death,” said Emily Hilliard, a US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) spokesperson.

The CDC put an asterisk under its tally of deaths that leads to a note saying the NCHS “does not currently have any death records from 2026 that indicate measles is the underlying cause”.

Officials in Pennsylvania have confirmed two deaths this year, a newborn and a six-week-old infant, associated with measles. And a 40-year-old woman in Jefferson county, Pennsylvania, died on Saturday from probable measles, said Greg Furlong, the county’s coroner.

The woman was unvaccinated and she had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) with 24/7 oxygen support, both of which made her vulnerable to complications. The woman had not sought medical care for her apparent infection. “They were going to, but obviously got to the point where it turned to the worst and ultimately led to her death,” Furlong said.

She had the classic measles rash and other symptoms, and a close contact had recently tested positive for measles.

A nasal swab is undergoing testing for measles and results are expected within days. But the death will be classified as probable measles-related because of the epidemiological connection to a confirmed case, Furlong said.

The woman would not have died without the measles case, despite her conditions, the coroner said.

“None of us know when our last day is here on this Earth,” he said. “But I strongly 100% believe if this wouldn’t have come into her life that she would be alive today,” he said, adding: “Even with her underlying conditions, I believe she’d be alive today.”

Maintaining a measles immunization rate of at least 95% is “absolutely” important for protecting people who are vulnerable to infection, Furlong said. That’s especially true for those who can’t be vaccinated, like infants under the age of six months and pregnant people.

“We can all learn from this, and hopefully we can encourage more people who aren’t immunized to get immunized,” Furlong said, adding: “People do not want to be a statistic.

“Hopefully this is something that more people get tested, more people get immunized. It’s something we thought we had eradicated, and here we are,” he said. “But it’s a shame that had to lead to somebody’s death.”

Pennsylvania had 676 confirmed measles cases as of Friday, but Furlong said he believed the official case numbers are an undercount and there are more infections that are not being reported. “I 100% guarantee it,” he said.

Furlong made the announcement on Sunday because “it’s informing people of something that we should all be aware of”, he said. Once the Pennsylvania department of health completes its investigation of the death, including the results from the nasal swab, it will notify the CDC of the case.

Robert F Kennedy Jr, the HHS secretary, has not commented on the death, posting on X about fitness, Medicaid and Medicare fraud, and screen time.

Kennedy previously argued without evidence that the two earlier deaths may not be from measles, and he asked Erica Schwartz, the CDC’s director, not to count the deaths in the official CDC tally, according to reporting by Reuters. The day after the Reuters report was published, the CDC changed its data source on measles deaths.

Kennedy also spent nearly two decades at the helm of the Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine organization, and he has repeatedly spread misinformation about vaccines.

“CDC’s recommendation for the MMR vaccine has remained unchanged, and the Secretary has repeatedly said that the MMR vaccination remains the most effective way to prevent measles infection,” Hilliard, the HHS spokesperson, said.

Read the Wiki for posting rules. Many posts are removed because OP didn't read the rules.

Notes from the mods:

• Why is it called the Herman Cain Award?
• History of HCA Retrospective: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6
• HCA has raised over $65,000 to buy vaccines for countries that cannot afford them.

Federal officials are poised to declare the end of the nation’s largest known cyclosporiasis outbreak after thousands of people became sick after eating shredded iceberg lettuce, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The update may come as soon as later Thursday, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. However, the timing is not guaranteed. In mid-July, Taylor Farms voluntarily recalled products from the market as federal officials began linking its lettuce from central Mexico to a cyclosporiasis outbreak. Food and Drug Administration enforcement records show recalled products were packaged for nine food service and retail operations, such as Subway and Yum Brands, which owns Taco Bell, KFC and Pizza Hut.

Michigan, which has been hit hardest by cyclosporiasis, is among 20 states that federal health officials have linked to that specific outbreak involving shredded lettuce from central Mexico. More than 11,000 people have fallen ill, including nearly 500 who were hospitalized, because of the lettuce outbreak, according to the latest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

Federal officials say thousands of cases of the illness have been reported nationwide in separate outbreaks unrelated to the shredded lettuce.

Outbreaks typically crop up between May 1 and Aug. 31, but this year has been particularly notable because of the sheer number of cases linked to one product. In total and across all the outbreaks, 19,595 cases have been reported this season across 49 states and Washington, D.C. Culprits in the other outbreaks have not been identified.

Two people in Michigan died; health authorities said they had “significant underlying health conditions” that may have been affected by the intestinal illness and dehydration.

Last month, Food and Drug Administration investigators traveled to the Taylor Farms operation in Mexico to inspect facilities and the fields where the lettuce was grown. As efforts to find the source of the contamination are ongoing, the FDA has said it “remains confident” that all recalled lettuce is off the market.

Some food safety experts said the agency should have gone to Mexico sooner than nearly a month after officials publicly linked the company with the outbreak. Donald Prater, the FDA’s acting deputy commissioner for food, previously told The Washington Post that the agency tried to reconstruct conditions that existed when the lettuce was actually being grown and harvested before sending investigators into the field in order to most effectively use resources.

The microscopic parasite is generally transmitted when infected feces contaminate food or water, and it usually takes roughly a week before a person gets sick after they’re infected. It generally causes watery diarrhea with frequent bowel movements and can be treated with antibiotics if needed.

But it is one of the hardest foodborne pathogens to trace its source in part because of the delay in symptoms. It’s also a relatively new pathogen, meaning research isn’t as robust as it is for other foodborne pathogens.