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CDC Recognizes Third Measles Death, Still Short of Pennsylvania Count
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has added a third U.S. measles death to its national tracker as total cases for 2026 surpass 4,400.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) told Reuters the CDC updated its count after the National Center for Health Statistics received a report of a measles-related death and verified the disease was the underlying cause, the Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement. The agency’s database does not specify when or where the death occurred.
According to the statement, the CDC is working with the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists to develop a standardized case definition for deaths due to measles.
“This work is intended to promote consistent classification and reporting of measles deaths across jurisdictions,” the statement said.
Can the Midterms Save Vaccines? Don’t Count on It.
If the mid-October polls are accurate, the public health community will have many more friends when the new Congress convenes on January 3, 2027. However, even an outcome that brings more pro-vaccine members to Congress will still leave vaccines facing long-term existential threats at both the federal and state levels through regulatory and legislative proposals and actions.
Heavy lifting from pro-vaccine policymakers and advocates will be essential over the next 2 years, but this need will likely stretch into 2029 and beyond. Throughout 2025, President Trump and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccine policies kept expanding.
This created an opportunity to make vaccine advocacy a viable electoral issue in 2026. Accordingly, we urged the public health and medical communities to embrace a long-term grassroots, pro-vaccine movement with a narrative that could move voters and votes in the midterms.
The US Fertility Rate Has Hit Another Record Low Despite MAGA Calls for a ‘Baby Boom’
The U.S. fertility rate has hit another record low. For every 1,000 women, aged 15-44, approximately 53 gave birth last year — down from 54 the previous year, according to new data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Birth rates decreased among those up to age 29 but increased for women aged 30-44, the CDC found.
The findings are indicative of a broader U.S. trend in recent decades and one that the Trump administration and its MAGA allies, including Elon Musk, have sought to reverse.
President Donald Trump was considering a proposal to offer $5,000 “baby bonuses” to new moms last year, according to The New York Times, and previously told the Conservative Political Action Conference he wanted to spur another “baby boom.”
MAGA ally Elon Musk, who has 14 children and the president’s ear, fears declines in fertility rates could mean the “end of civilization.”
EPA Plans Weaker Pollution Limits for Data Center Turbines
One of the world’s top environmental organizations sounded the alarm Tuesday on attempts by the Trump administration to weaken protections against dangerous air pollution from combustion turbines used to power data centers.
The Environmental Protection Agency sent a proposal called the Nonroad Combustion Turbines Rule to the White House that is pending final review. According to the Environmental Defense Fund, the rule is expected to exempt these combustion turbines from Clean Air Act standards that apply to industrial sources, and instead regulate them as “mobile sources” akin to vehicles or offroad equipment.
The group warns this would allow the turbine’s health-harming pollution to affect nearby communities with no public notice, no public engagement, no review of local air quality impacts, no assessment of cleaner alternatives, and insufficient oversight to ensure these combustion turbines comply with the minimal health protections that would apply.
RFK Jr. Visits JPS Hospital in Fort Worth to Announce Kidney Plan
Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported:
U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was in Fort Worth on Tuesday to announce a new national kidney care plan at JPS Health Network, Tarrant County’s public hospital system. Kennedy launched the national plan with a focus on three priorities: preventing kidney failure, improving dialysis care, and reforming kidney transplantation.
“(The) organ transplant program had a monopoly that ended up corrupting the system,” Kennedy said at JPS on Tuesday. Health Resources and Services Administration Administrator Tom Engels said the new plan was focused on ensuring that there was no corruption in the dialysis and transplant systems and stopping monopolies in those systems.
UK Government to Explore Linking GP and Hospital Records to Monitor Vaccine Safety
The Government has supported the Covid inquiry’s finding that GP and hospital records across the UK should be linked to monitor vaccine safety.
It said that meeting the inquiry’s recommendation to link data for ‘post-authorisation safety surveillance’ of vaccines, would require the creation of a new framework ‘for sharing, linking and using health data across the UK’.
Creating this framework would require ‘significant investment over time’, the Government said, and it did not specify a timeframe for achieving this.
It comes as part of the Government’s response to module four of the Covid-19 inquiry, which focused on the development of Covid-19 vaccines and their rollout in the UK.
Published in April, recommendation four of Baroness Hallett’s report had said the NHS needed to improve links between GP and hospital records to monitor vaccine safety ahead of future pandemics.
