A Pennsylvania county commissioner is accusing Gov. Josh Shapiro of deliberately misleading the public about two deaths he tied to the state's measles outbreak, charges backed by the local coroner, who says his office has no record of anyone dying from the disease.
Lancaster County Commissioner Joshua Parsons, the Republican vice chairman of the county's three-member board, told Fox News Digital that Shapiro's Tuesday press conference at Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health Hospital was designed to leave the public with one impression, that measles had killed two people, while the governor's own language quietly hedged the claim with the term "measles-associated."
The gap between what Shapiro said and what the county coroner found is now at the center of a political fight that has drawn in HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and raised pointed questions about how Pennsylvania's Democratic governor is using a real public-health crisis for maximum political effect.
Shapiro stood at the Lancaster hospital Tuesday and declared the state had recorded its first "measles-associated deaths" in 35 years. Two unvaccinated people had died, he said, and the lesson was clear.
"I want to be clear: This illness and death from measles is completely preventable."
But Lancaster County Coroner Dr. Stephen Diamantoni told local media he had not been contacted by Shapiro or the Pennsylvania Department of Health before the announcement. He was surprised to learn the press conference was happening at all.
Parsons laid out the problem in detail. The coroner's office, he said, had zero measles deaths on record, and under Pennsylvania law, deaths from contagious diseases must be reported to the county coroner.
"The coroner reported that they don't have... they had zero measles deaths or measles associated-deaths reported. And in Pennsylvania if you have someone who dies of a contagious disease, that does have to be reported to the county coroner."
Parsons did acknowledge one case the coroner had handled: an infant who died during a home birth. The baby had tested positive for measles. But the coroner and the pathologist concluded measles was not the cause of death. The infant died of a lacerated spleen.
"The coroner had one case where there was an infant who died in a home birth, and he's talked about this publicly, and that infant died with measles but not of measles."
Only after the press conference did the state health department confirm that infant was one of the two deaths it was counting. The identity and circumstances of the second person remain unclear. Parsons said the coroner has received no information about a second death.
The Pennsylvania Department of Health responded to Fox News Digital with a carefully worded statement. It insisted it had "consistently used the term 'measles-associated'" and had never described the cause of death of either individual. The department defined the term to mean that laboratory or epidemiologic evidence of measles was present, both individuals had tested positive, but that the disease "may not be assessed by the medical certifier or coroner to be the immediate cause of death."
That distinction matters. It means the state's own framework allows it to announce a "measles-associated death" even when the coroner who examined the body concluded measles did not kill the person.
On the question of why the coroner was never contacted, the department pointed to Pennsylvania Statutes Title 16 § 4236, the state law that spells out when a coroner must be called to investigate a death. The department noted it "does not regulate or oversee coroner operations, nor are coroners involved in most deaths within their county."
Parsons found that answer unpersuasive. He noted the statute's carve-outs apply to situations like an elderly person dying of natural causes, not to deaths involving infectious disease, which do trigger a reporting requirement.
"But if you have someone who dies of an infectious disease, that does have to be reported. So if there is a second death in Lancaster County, that should have been reported."
He allowed one narrow scenario: someone could have contracted measles in Lancaster County and then died in a different county, in which case a different coroner's office would have handled it. But he called that possibility "highly unlikely" and said the state should say so if it were the case.
Pennsylvania's state-level political dynamics have grown increasingly contentious, and the measles dispute is adding fuel to a broader fight over transparency and trust in Harrisburg.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. weighed in the day after Shapiro's press conference, posting a lengthy critique on X. He accused the governor of rushing to Lancaster County to stage a "national press conference" and described Shapiro's tone as inappropriately eager.
"Governor Shapiro's unseemly rush to Lancaster County to convene a national press conference and his giddy delight in announcing two measles deaths was a morose commentary on the contemporary political dialogue."
Kennedy went further, casting the event as a political strategy rather than a public-health response.
"The performance was a replay of the Democrats' COVID playbook: fearmongering, misinformation, finger-pointing, and the weaponization of infectious disease fears for political gain."
Kennedy also pointed to the coroner's statements and suggested the deaths "may even have been altogether fabricated by one of the Governor's hopeful staffers." That claim goes beyond what the coroner said, Diamantoni disputed the cause of death in the infant case but did not allege fabrication. Fox News Digital contacted the White House and HHS for additional comment; no response was included in the reporting.
The Washington Post separately reported that Kennedy and Shapiro had a heated phone call minutes before the Tuesday press conference, during which Shapiro told Kennedy he did not want the federal government's help with the outbreak.
That exchange adds context to the political fault lines. Shapiro is a Democratic governor facing the worst measles outbreak in the country. Kennedy leads the federal health apparatus under an administration that has clashed repeatedly with blue-state officials over vaccine messaging. Neither side appears interested in cooperation.
The tensions mirror a broader pattern in Pennsylvania voter sentiment, where frustration with partisan posturing has reshaped the state's political landscape.
The underlying outbreak is real and serious. The Pennsylvania Department of Health reported 460 confirmed measles cases across 31 counties as of Friday. CDC data shows it is the nation's largest measles outbreak since 1991. The majority of infected individuals are unvaccinated.
AP News reported that the two Lancaster County deaths marked the first U.S. measles deaths of 2025, bringing the five-year national total to five, more than the combined total of reported measles deaths over the previous three decades. The wire service also noted that 2,777 measles cases have been reported nationally in 2025, already surpassing all of 2024 and making it the worst year since 1991.
Parsons did not deny the outbreak's severity. He acknowledged measles is present in Lancaster County, which is home to the nation's largest Amish settlement. Many Amish and Mennonite residents choose not to vaccinate, and Parsons said they are largely "going about their life" despite the outbreak.
"We certainly have resources available for people if they wanna get vaccinated, but I believe strongly that's each individual's choice."
Just The News reported that roughly half of Pennsylvania's measles cases are concentrated in Lancaster County, and that every confirmed case involved someone who was not fully vaccinated. Republican legislators have also pushed back against newly proposed state regulations on disease handling, citing concerns about government overreach.
Pennsylvania's Health Secretary, Dr. Debra Bogen, who appeared alongside Shapiro at the Tuesday press conference, has argued that decades of successful vaccination left the public unfamiliar with measles and its risks. She has said that "because the MMR vaccine essentially eliminated measles here in the United States decades ago, people have forgotten how serious it can be."
That framing is not in dispute. What is in dispute is whether Shapiro's administration used that legitimate concern to overstate the facts on the ground, presenting deaths as measles casualties when the local coroner who examined at least one of the bodies reached a different conclusion.
The core accusation from Parsons is not that measles is harmless or that the outbreak is fake. It is that Shapiro framed his announcement to leave a specific impression, that two people died of measles, while using language that technically stopped short of saying so.
"Well, the governor, in the press conference, they said they were measles-associated deaths, but it was framed, and very much the underlying assertion to it, was that these were measles deaths."
The media coverage that followed suggests the framing worked. The New York Times published an article on Tuesday headlined "Two Unvaccinated People Died From Measles in Pennsylvania, Officials Say." That headline drops the "associated" qualifier entirely and states flatly that the deaths were "from measles." A Times representative told Fox News Digital the paper is "confident in the accuracy of our story." The article remained posted as of the time of Fox News Digital's report.
Shapiro himself, at the press conference, said: "Today, we see the consequences of a lack of immunizations in the first measles-associated deaths that our Commonwealth has seen in 35 years." He followed that with: "This illness and death from measles is completely preventable." The shift from "measles-associated" in one sentence to "death from measles" in the next captures the ambiguity Parsons is describing.
The Pennsylvania Department of Health's own definition acknowledges that "measles-associated" does not mean measles caused the death. But Shapiro's rhetoric, and the national media echo, collapsed that distinction. An infant who died of a lacerated spleen, who happened to test positive for measles, became a measles death in the public narrative.
That matters because the political stakes are enormous. Shapiro is positioning himself as a public-health leader standing up to the Trump administration's vaccine skepticism. Kennedy is positioning himself as a reformer exposing Democratic fearmongering. Both sides have incentives to stretch the facts, and the people who pay the price for that stretching are the residents of Lancaster County, including the Amish and Mennonite communities who are being talked about far more than they are being talked to.
Even within Pennsylvania's Democratic coalition, the willingness of party leaders to prioritize political messaging over transparency has become a recurring source of friction. Sen. John Fetterman has openly broken with his party on multiple fronts, and polls suggest Pennsylvania voters are increasingly skeptical of partisan gamesmanship from either side.
Several basic facts remain unresolved. The identity and circumstances of the second "measles-associated" death have not been disclosed. The coroner's office says it has received no information about a second death. If that person died in another county, the state has not said so. If the person died in Lancaster County of an infectious disease, the coroner should have been notified under state law, and was not.
Shapiro's office, when contacted by Fox News Digital, referred all questions to the Department of Health. The department's response defended its terminology but did not explain why the coroner was not contacted before the governor held a press conference in the coroner's own county to announce deaths the coroner knew nothing about.
The broader landscape in Pennsylvania politics continues to shift. Fetterman's unusual cross-party appeal reflects a state electorate that rewards straight talk and punishes evasion, a dynamic Shapiro may want to consider before his next press conference.
When a governor has to hide behind the word "associated" to make his case, the case is weaker than he wants you to think, and the people of Lancaster County deserve better than a press conference built on a technicality.
