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Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator Mehmet Oz downplayed the GOP-fueled surge in measles infections after Pennsylvania officials announced that a newborn baby died with complications related to the disease this week.

On Wednesday, the Pennsylvania Department of Health revealed that one of the two measles-related deaths in Lancaster County this week was of a newborn baby. Both individuals were unvaccinated, and their deaths marked the first recorded deaths related to measles this year in the U.S.

Measles cases have risen to over 2,700 so far this year, the highest level in decades. The disease had been declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000 due mostly to the effective measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccination program. Disinformation about vaccines spread by the Trump administration and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is driving the rise in measles cases, according to experts.

Trump administration official Mehmet Oz claimed, however, that the fears of measles are overblown.

“I don’t want anyone in America concerned inappropriately” about the disease, said Oz on Fox News. “We don’t know exactly what happened in Pennsylvania yet. We don’t know if the children died from measles or they had another condition that was already attacking them and they happened to get measles at the same time.”

Pennsylvania Reports US’s First Confirmed Measles-Related Deaths This Year

Oz said that this is a common practice when attributing deaths related to COVID-19 during the........

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