Lancaster County Coroner Dr. Stephen Diamantoni said Monday that his office has identified a second person who died while infected with measles and is investigating the cause and manner of death. [1] He did not name the person. He would not say he is sure it is the second of the two "measles-associated" deaths Pennsylvania announced last week. Asked if he was operating on that presumption, he said, "I don't presume anything, but if you are asking me: 'Is it possible?' then the answer is yes." [1]
Sunday this paper reported that Diamantoni's first on-camera account of the newborn restated a narrow forensic finding — a ruptured spleen, not measles as the immediate cause — and that his office had no information on the second death, which he said then sat outside what he could discuss. Monday's news conference changes the documentary record on that second silence. It does not close it. Diamantoni said the state did not give his office the information, that the investigation is just beginning, and that "we haven't made any determination." [1] He would not say how the office concluded the death was measles-related, or how, where, or exactly when the person died. [1]
Pennsylvania Health Department press secretary Neil Ruhland declined Monday to identify Diamantoni's case as the second of the two deaths announced Aug. 25. "We've been very staunch on this ... in an effort to protect the person's confidentiality," Ruhland said. [1] The department has used "measles-associated" for deaths in which "laboratory or epidemiologic evidence of measles is present but the official cause of death is under investigation." [1] FactCheck.org, updating a briefing first posted Aug. 28, notes that the state's longer formulation also covers cases in which measles "may not be assessed by the medical certifier or coroner to be the immediate cause of death." [2]
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has now put its own hesitation on the national ledger. LancasterOnline quoted the agency's statement in full. "This week's measles outbreaks update will not include the two measles-associated deaths reported by the Pennsylvania Department of Health on August 25 while CDC reviews additional information regarding the circumstances and causes of death," the CDC wrote. "At this time, 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. CDC will update the national count as additional information becomes available." [1]
That is not a finding that the deaths were invented. It is a federal agency declining, for this week's dashboard, to count two deaths a state has already announced. The distinction matters because of what has been circulating since last Tuesday. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. alleged on X that the announcement "may even have been altogether fabricated by one of the Governor's hopeful staffers," and that the Lancaster County coroner had "no record of any measles deaths." [2] County Commissioner Josh Parsons, on the day of the state's press conference, wrote that officials had announced two measles-associated deaths and that the coroner's office was describing a person who died with measles, not from it. [2] Those posts treated a classification fight as a fraud story. Monday's record still contains two open investigations, a state that will not identify the second decedent, and a CDC that will not yet print either death on its chart.
Diamantoni, asked Monday about an Atlantic interview with an Amish family that had lost a newborn, said the state had not told him who the second measles-associated death was and that his office should be told under Pennsylvania coroner law. [1] FactCheck.org, citing lawyers and epidemiologists, has already noted that not every death must go to a coroner, and that "measles-associated" in surveillance language is not the same field as the immediate cause on a death certificate. [2] Those are process facts. They do not tell a reader whether measles killed either person.
What can be said without guessing: a coroner who last week could not speak to a second death is now investigating one. A federal dashboard that might have absorbed Pennsylvania's two announcements this week will not. The state's term remains "measles-associated." The CDC's term, for now, is absence. Neither X's fabrication shorthand nor a clean confirmation of two measles deaths is the document in front of the public. The document is a dispute, dated Monday, with names still withheld.
-- NORA WHITFIELD, Chicago