Poliomyelitis: what you need to know The most serious symptoms caused by the poliovirus are paraesthesia, meningitis and paralysis. (NCD)
NEW YORK – Citing new evidence of possible “community spread,” the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed Sunday that a federal team has been sent to New York to investigate the first diagnosed case of polio in the Empire State in almost a decade.
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“CDC continues to work with the New York State Department of Health to investigate its recent case of polio, including ongoing testing of sewage samples for poliovirus and deploying a small team to New York to assist on the ground with research and vaccination efforts,” an agency spokesman said in a prepared statement, obtained by WNBC-TV on Sunday.
The state’s lone case so far was detected in an unvaccinated adult in Rockland County who suffered paralysis.
According to CBS News, New York state health officials have found evidence of additional cases of the polio virus in sewage samples from two different counties, prompting them to warn that hundreds of people may be infected. .
“Based on past polio outbreaks, New Yorkers should know that for every case of paralytic polio observed, there may be hundreds of other people infected,” said State Health Commissioner Dr. Mary T. Bassett in a prepared statement.
In turn, state health department officials on Thursday stepped up their push for people who had not been vaccinated against the virus to get vaccinated “immediately” because the diagnosed case could be “the tip of the iceberg ” of a much wider threat, The New. the York Times reported.
Three positive sewage samples from Rockford County and four from neighboring Orange County that researchers have genetically linked to the single diagnosis in Rockford County suggest that the polio virus is spreading in local communities, the health department said in a press release issued Thursday.
“Coupled with the latest sewage findings, the department is treating the single case of polio as just the tip of the iceberg of a much larger potential spread. As we learn more, what we know is clear: the danger of polio is present in New York today,” said Bassett.
Polio was declared eliminated in the United States in 1979, more than two decades after vaccines became available, WNBC reported.
“We must meet this moment by making sure that adults, including pregnant women and infants as young as 2 months old, are up to date on their immunizations, the safe protection against this debilitating virus that all New Yorkers need,” he said. add Bassett.
Before the development of a polio vaccine in the 1950s, thousands of Americans died in polio outbreaks and tens of thousands, many of them children, were left with varying degrees of paralysis, CBS reported News.
According to the CDC’s most recent childhood vaccination data, about 93 percent of 2-year-olds nationwide had received at least three doses of polio vaccine, the network reported.
Meanwhile, unvaccinated adults can receive a three-dose immunization, and those who are vaccinated but considered high-risk can receive a lifetime booster shot, according to the health department.
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