In a statement about the sewage finding, New York City officials stressed the urgent need to stay up-to-date with polio vaccinations, particularly for those in the greater New York metro area. Most people in the US are protected from polio by vaccination. The main series of three vaccines provides 99% protection. However, unvaccinated and undervaccinated people are vulnerable. “For every one case of paralytic polio that is detected, hundreds more may go undetected,” said State Health Commissioner Dr. Mary T. Bassett. “Detection of polio virus in sewage samples in New York is alarming, but not surprising.” The virus is most commonly spread through feces and, less commonly, when a person infected with the polio virus sneezes or coughs. About 90% of people with polio have no visible symptoms, according to the World Health Organization. Some have flu-like symptoms such as sore throat, fever, fatigue and nausea. About 1 in 25 people will get viral meningitis, an infection of the covering of the spinal cord and/or brain, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 1 in 200 people will be paralyzed and unable to move parts of their body or feel some kind of weakness in the arms, legs or both. Even children who fully recover from the initial illness may develop muscle pain and weakness years later. Paralysis can lead to permanent disability and death as it can affect the muscles used for breathing. The City Health Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan said that with polio circulating in our communities, “there is nothing more essential than vaccinating our children to protect them from this virus and if you are an unvaccinated or incompletely vaccinated adult, choose now to get the vaccine ».
CDC investigates polio in New York
The sewage finding comes after a case of paralytic polio was identified in a Rockland County, New York, resident on July 21 and detected in sewage samples in May, June and July from Rockland and Orange counties. A CDC official told CNN this week that the case in Rockland County was “just the tip of the iceberg” and suggested that “there must be several hundred cases in the community circulating.” The agency sent a team of disease detectives to Rockland County last week to investigate the case and help with vaccination. A community health leader who met with the team told CNN that researchers are “pretty nervous” that polio “could get out of control very quickly and we could have a crisis on our hands.” Before the invention of the vaccine, polio was considered “one of the most feared diseases in the United States,” according to the CDC. In the 1940s, it disabled an average of more than 35,000 people a year in the US. Once the polio vaccine became available in 1955, the number of cases dropped significantly. The last case in the US was reported nearly a decade ago. Officials report that routine vaccine coverage has declined among New York children since 2019, noting that only 86.2 percent of New York children between the ages of 6 months and 5 years have received three doses of the polio vaccine, which means that almost 14% are not fully protected. Some children missed vaccination appointments due to the pandemic. Others live in small groups of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in New York, including Rockland County, who have decided not to vaccinate their children. Others in the religious Jewish community in Rockland have embraced efforts to work with public health officials to educate those who refuse to vaccinate their children. In some New York neighborhoods, the vaccination rate is significantly lower than in the rest of the city. In Williamsburg, for example, only 56.3% of children are vaccinated. In Battery Park City, it’s 58%. In Bedford-Stuyvesant/Ocean Hill/Brownsville, it’s 58.4%. Nationally, the vaccination rate for children is almost 93%. “The risk to New Yorkers is real, but the defense is so simple: Get vaccinated against polio,” said Vasan, the city’s health commissioner. “Polio is completely preventable and its re-emergence should be a call to action for us all.” CNN’s Elizabeth Cohen, Danielle Herman and John Bonifield contributed to this report.
