Posted on 07/21/22
| News Source: NY Post
A Rockland County, New York, resident has polio — marking the first case recorded in the US in nearly a decade, officials said Thursday.
The New York state and Rockland County departments of health did not immediately provide further details about the patient or their condition.
State health officials, however, advised medical practitioners to be “vigilant for additional cases.”
The chain of transmission that led to the case is under investigation, the state DOH said. Sequencing indicates the transmission chain is “from an individual who received the oral polio vaccine,” which has not been given in the U.S. since 2000, officials said.
Polio is a highly contagious virus that often enters the body through the mouth via contaminated water, and in its worst cases can cause paralysis or death.
The highly effective, CDC-approved vaccine against the virus, which is required for schoolchildren in New York state, all but eradicated the disease in the US in the 1970s. The Rockland County case is the first recorded in the country since 2013.
The state DOH told The Post it is the first known instance of polio in New York in decades, but did not provide an exact date of the last recorded case.
“Many of you may be too young to remember polio, but when I was growing up, this disease struck fear in families, including my own,” Rockland County Executive Ed Day said in a statement.