The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its website to note a single death from the measles so far this year, but officials in Pennsylvania have announced four measles deaths.
The CDC said on its updated measles webpage that one person has died of measles, though it also said the “number is subject to change” and that it “will update its reporting as additional information becomes available and relevant reviews are completed.”
All four measles deaths confirmed by Pennsylvania health officials affected unvaccinated individuals. The deaths are the state’s first measles fatalities since 1991; the state health department said that about 20% of all measles patients end up hospitalized, with one to three patients in every 1,000 dying from the disease.
The CDC did not provide any age, vaccination information or state of residence for the single measles death it listed.
The CDC told NBC News that its dashboard was updated because the death was confirmed by the National Center for Health Statistics.
An unnamed source told medical news site MedPage Today that “typically, the CDC goes with whatever the state reports,” with the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System being used instead.
The death listed was one of the four announced earlier by Pennsylvania, according to Bloomberg News, but officials in Pennsylvania told the Philadelphia Inquirer that they are “not aware of which death the CDC is citing.”
The Pennsylvania Department of Health announced on Aug. 25 that two residents in Lancaster County, roughly 57 miles northwest of Philadelphia, had died.
The two victims were later confirmed to be infants from the county’s Amish community. While state officials attribute both deaths to measles, the county coroner ultimately said one of the deaths was not measles-related, while confirming the second death was measles related, according to the Inquirer.
On Sept. 15, state health officials disclosed two more measles deaths. One occurred in Mifflin County, roughly 137 miles northwest of Philadelphia, and the other occurred in Jefferson County, roughly 217 miles northwest of Philadelphia.
The Mifflin County patient was an 18-year-old while the Jefferson County patient was 40, according to medical industry trade magazine Becker’s Hospital Review.
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