By Kara Murez HealthDay ReporterReporter for HealthDay
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 a young, unvaccinated adult in Rockland County.
“Based on what we know about this case and polio in general, [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 in protecting against this potentially debilitating disease and is part of the backbone of mandatory, routine 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 it from someone who received a type of live polio vaccine administered 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 hands of those who need them,” Rockland County Health Commissioner Dr. Patricia Schnabel Rupert said during a news conference Thursday, the AP reported.
Rockland County, an upstate New York suburb, is known for previous cases of vaccine resistance and had a measles outbreak that infected 312 people in 2018-2019, according to the AP.
Before vaccines became available, polio was a dangerous disease that caused annual outbreaks, including 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 the vaccine is still decades or so away shows you how relentless it is.” Do the right thing for your child and the best thing for your community and vaccinate your child now.”
Polio was declared eliminated in the United States in 1979. Vaccines have been available since 1955, with national vaccine campaigns gradually reducing cases to 100 in the 1960s and fewer than 10 in the 1970s, according to US Centers for disease control and prevention.
About 93% of 2-year-old children 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 require only 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 for the unvaccinated.
“It is not normal. We don’t want to see that,” Nuzzo told the AP. “If you’ve been vaccinated, it’s nothing 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. In recent years, it has also been found in many African countries, the Middle East and Asia. It was found in sewage samples in London last month, prompting the British government to issue a warning to parents about vaccines.
The last reported case in the US was in 2013, when a 7-month-old child who had recently moved to the United States from India was diagnosed in Texas. This child also had the type of poliomyelitis associated with the live vaccine used in other countries. Still, this weakened live virus can, in rare cases, mutate into a form that can cause new outbreaks, the AP reported.
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The World Health Organization has more on polio.
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