New York Polio Case Stirs Fear, Drives Vaccine

Brittany Strickland was “scary to death” when she heard that the United States had the first polio case in almost a decade.

“My mother was anti-vaccine, so I knew I had never been vaccinated against polio as a child,” the designer explained to AFP.

Strickland was vaccinated in Pomona, Rockland County, New York, the first confirmed case of polio in the United States since 2013 in July.

Since then, disease The virus was detected in wastewater samples from the area, as well as sewage in neighboring counties and New York City, suggesting that the virus is spreading.

These developments threaten to bring polio, once one of America’s most feared diseases, now endemic to only a few developing countries, back to ravaging the state. Experts are beginning to fear that

“I thought it was a virus that was going extinct,” John Dennehy, a virologist at the City University of New York, told AFP.

Health officials are urging everyone who has not been vaccinated to get vaccinated, and Rockland County is offering free vaccinations.

Located 30 miles north of Manhattan, this region has polio immunization rates well below the national average.

According to the New York State Department of Health, only 60% of 2-year-olds are vaccinated, compared to 79% statewide.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends the first of four doses at 2 months of age.

Polio is a deadly and potentially fatal viral disease that primarily affects children under the age of five, but can have devastating effects on unvaccinated adults.

Before a vaccine was developed in the late 1950s, periodic outbreaks killed thousands of children and left thousands more stranded in wheelchairs and leg braces.

Massive global efforts over the last few decades have brought the disease closer to eradication, and wild polioviruses are now only found in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The last reported case of spontaneous polio in the United States was in 1979.

“Horrible,” said Strickland. “You wouldn’t expect that to happen here, and we’re in this situation right now with a lot of people not getting vaccinated.”

Polio is highly contagious and can spread from person to person through feces, sneezes, coughs and contaminated water before an infected person shows symptoms.

“Silver Lining”

Analysis of the Rockland case has led officials to believe that the original source of infection was a person who received the oral polio vaccine, which was discontinued in the United States in 2000.

OPV replicates in the intestine and can be transmitted to others through faecal-contaminated water. Although weaker than wild-type poliovirus, this variant can cause severe illness and paralysis in unvaccinated people.

The confirmed case in July was an unvaccinated young man whose disease had left him paralyzed.

They said he had never traveled abroad, suggesting the disease was domestically transmitted.

According to local news reports, the infected men are members of the Orthodox Jewish community and tend to be more hesitant about vaccines.

Rockland has a large population of Orthodox Jews. Last week, more than a dozen rabbis issued an open letter urging members to get vaccinated.

Shoshana Bernstein, an independent health communicator and orthodox Jew who educates members about the importance of getting vaccinated, said that “more closed communities” were affected by anti-vaccine messages. He says it’s easy.

“The silver lining of polio is that there are elders in the community who can speak from first-hand experience. It’s having an impact in a community that values ​​the family system and its elders so much,” she said. told to

It’s too early to tell if the isolated cases are isolated or part of a wider outbreak, but Dennehy fears they may be just the “tip of the iceberg.” doing.

“Only a fraction of those infected will show symptoms, and only a fraction of them will get paralytic polio,” he said.

“But if enough people are infected, eventually we will see more and more paralysis. polio.”

© 2022 AFP