The Pennsylvania Department of Health reported 497 measles cases this year. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last updated its state-level figures on August 21 and listed 371 for Pennsylvania. The Wisconsin Department of Health Services reported 94 confirmed cases and six probable. The federal count for Wisconsin is 38.
Those gaps, documented by the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, are not errors. They are the predictable result of two reporting systems running on different clocks and different definitions. But for a parent deciding whether their county is close enough to an outbreak to ask about an early vaccine dose, the difference between 371 and 497 is not academic.
