By Cara Murez HealthDay ReporterHealth Day Reporter
FRIDAY, July 22, 2022 (HealthDay News) — New York health officials said Thursday that the first U.S. case of polio in nearly a decade has been confirmed in an unvaccinated young adult in Rockland County.
“Based on what we know about this case, and polio in general, the [New York] The Department of Health strongly recommends that unvaccinated individuals be vaccinated or boosted with the FDA-approved IPV polio vaccine as soon as possible,” state Health Commissioner Dr. Mary Bassett said in a statement. “The polio vaccine is safe and effective and protects against this. potentially debilitating disease and has been part of the backbone of routine and necessary childhood immunizations recommended by health officials and public health agencies across the country.”
In the Rockland County case, the patient developed paralysis, but is no longer contagious. The person likely contracted the disease from someone who had received a type of live polio vaccine given only in other countries (the United States uses an inactivated type of vaccine that cannot cause polio), the Associated Press reported. The person had not recently traveled outside the country, health officials said.
Investigators are now working to determine specifically how the infection occurred and whether others were exposed, while health officials have scheduled polio vaccination clinics for Friday and Monday in New York.
“We want shots in the arms of those who need them,” Rockland County Health Commissioner Dr. Patricia Schnabel Ruppert said during a news conference Thursday, AP reported.
Rockland County, a northern suburb of New York City, is known for past cases of vaccine resistance and had a measles outbreak that infected 312 people in 2018-2019, according to the AP.
Before vaccines were available, polio was a much-feared disease that caused annual outbreaks that included thousands of cases of paralysis, mostly in children.
“Many of you may be too young to remember polio, but when I was growing up, this disease struck fear into families, including my own,” Rockland County Executive Ed Day said in a statement. “The fact that it’s still decades after the vaccine was created shows you how relentless it is. Do the right thing for your child and for the greater good of your community, and get your child vaccinated now.”
Polio was declared eliminated in the United States in 1979. Vaccines have been available since 1955, with national vaccination campaigns gradually reducing cases to 100 in the 1960s and less than 10 in the 1990s. 1970, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. .
About 93% of 2-year-olds in the United States have received at least three doses of the vaccine. The US government recommends doses at 2 months, 4 months, 6 to 18 months, and finally at 4 to 6 years, although some states only require three doses.
Although most Americans are vaccinated against polio, Brown University pandemic researcher Jennifer Nuzzo said this case should serve as a wake-up call to the unvaccinated.
“This is not normal. We don’t want to see this,” Nuzzo told the AP. “If you’re vaccinated, it’s not something you need to worry about. But if you haven’t vaccinated your kids, it’s really important to make sure they’re up to date.”
Polio is spread from person to person or through contaminated water. It can cause paralysis, permanent disability and death after infecting a person’s spinal cord.
The disease is endemic in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It has also been found in numerous African, Middle Eastern and Asian countries in recent years. It was found in sewage samples from London last month, prompting the British government to issue a warning to parents about vaccines.
The last reported case in the United States was in 2013, when a 7-month-old boy who had recently moved to the United States from India was diagnosed in Texas. That child also had the type of poliomyelitis associated with the live vaccine used in other countries. Still, this live, weakened virus can, in rare cases, mutate into a form that can lead to new outbreaks, the AP reported.
More information
The World Health Organization has more information on polio.