State and county authorities are advising medical practitioners and healthcare providers to be on the lookout for additional cases. Polio, or poliomyelitis, is a potentially crippling and even deadly infectious disease caused by a virus that spreads from person to person, invading the brain and spinal cord, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). One in 200 cases leads to irreversible paralysis. The polio vaccine, however, is highly effective at stopping polio, and the shot continues to be included in the CDC’s standard child immunization schedule. Because of a successful vaccination program in the United States in the 20th century, the country has been considered polio-free since 1979. Occasionally, however, a case still appears — the last known infection in the United States was recorded by CDC in 2013. The CDC said that the risk to the vaccinated public is low. The health agency is investigating how and where the individual got infected. A public health official close to the investigation told The Washington Post that the infected man, who is 20 years old, had traveled to Poland and Hungary this year and was hospitalized in June. The patient reportedly experienced muscle weakness and paralysis about a month ago. He has since been discharged from the hospital but is finding it difficult to walk.
Vaccination Is Vital for Protection
“Based on what we know about this case, and polio in general, the Department of Health strongly recommends that unvaccinated individuals get vaccinated or boosted with the FDA-approved IPV polio vaccine as soon as possible,” said New York state health commissioner Mary T. Bassett, MD, in a statement. “The polio vaccine is safe and effective, protecting against this potentially debilitating disease, and it has been part of the backbone of required, routine childhood immunizations recommended by health officials and public health agencies nationwide.” Anyone who is unvaccinated, including those who are pregnant, those who have not completed their polio vaccine series previously, and community members who are concerned they have might have been exposed, should get the polio shot. Individuals who are already vaccinated but are at risk of exposure are advised to receive a booster. Exposure can sometimes be difficult to determine, since an infected person can spread the virus to others immediately before symptoms appear and up to two weeks afterward. About 1 in 4 people with polio will have flu-like symptoms that may include sore throat, fever, tiredness, nausea, headache, and stomach pain, according to the CDC. Symptoms usually last two to five days, then go away on their own, but a small proportion of people may develop very severe illness that affects the brain and spinal cord. The CDC warns that even children who seem to fully recover can develop new muscle pain, weakness, or paralysis as adults, 15 to 40 years later — a condition called post-polio syndrome. A month before this U.S. case was detected, health authorities in the United Kingdom issued an alert that they had found the polio virus in wastewater in London, suggesting that it could be spreading there. In response to the polio detection in America, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative issued the following statement: “It is vital that all countries, in particular those with a high volume of travel and contact with polio-affected countries and areas, strengthen surveillance in order to rapidly detect any new virus importation and to facilitate a rapid response. Countries, territories, and areas should also maintain uniformly high routine immunization coverage at the district level and at the lowest administrative level to protect children from polio and to minimize the consequences of any new virus being introduced.”
