New Delhi, June 26 -- ATLANTA - When a clinician suspects a measles case that a local laboratory cannot confidently confirm, there is a reference laboratory that takes the call. For decades, that laboratory has been at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. The CDC announced this week it is stepping away from that role, permanently.

The agency told Politico it is "transitioning away" from federal diagnostic testing for measles and mumps, the first of the tests it paused in April to be formally and permanently discontinued. The decision arrives with 2,104 confirmed measles cases active across 41 states, two unvaccinated children dead in Texas, and 30 outbreaks simultaneously burning through communities where vaccinatio...