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Health officials announced Friday that the polio virus has been found in New York City sewage, a discovery that extends the known presence of the virus from the region’s northern suburbs to the larger city of the country.
The city and state health departments did not provide details on where or when the virus was discovered. But they said the finding suggests “probable local circulation of the virus”.
“Polio can lead to paralysis and even death,” the city said in a tweet. Officials are urging unvaccinated New Yorkers to immediately seek vaccinations that protect against the virus.
“The risk to New Yorkers is real, but the defense is so simple: Get vaccinated against polio,” city Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan said in a news release. “With polio circulating in our communities, there is simply 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 vaccinated. Polio is completely preventable and its re-emergence should be a call to action for all of us.”
Before Friday’s announcement, the virus had been found in sewage in the upstate New York suburbs of Rockland and Orange counties. Only one person, an unvaccinated 20-year-old man from Rockland County, is known to have been infected. The man sought treatment at a New York City hospital in June, officials said last month, and has difficulty walking. Authorities said no other cases have been identified.
His infection, the first in the United States in nearly a decade, and the presence of the virus in sewage from suburban counties indicated broader local transmission, the New York State Department of Health said last week . Officials urged anyone not vaccinated against polio, especially people in the New York metropolitan area, to get vaccinated.
The U.S. population is highly vaccinated, but anyone who is unsure whether they received their childhood vaccination series should seek advice from a health care provider. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has sent a team to Rockland County to help with the investigation. Three doses of the polio vaccine provide at least 99 percent protection, according to the CDC.
“Based on previous polio outbreaks, New Yorkers should know that for every case of paralytic polio observed, there may be hundreds of other people infected,” state Health Commissioner Mary T. Bassett said in the statement from last week “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.”
Along with covid-19 and monkeypox, the polio case gives the U.S. three viral diseases of concern that didn’t exist here just over two years ago.
Highly contagious, polio was a dreaded, sometimes fatal scourge before a vaccine was developed in 1955. It causes permanent paralysis in people who are not fully vaccinated in about 5 out of 1,000 cases.
Most of the US population is protected against the disease by vaccinations during childhood. But in areas with low vaccination coverage, such as the Orthodox Jewish community in Rockland County, unvaccinated people are at high risk. There is no treatment for polio.
In New York City, according to Friday’s news release, 86.2 percent of children ages 6 months to 5 years have received three doses of the polio vaccine. “Especially concerning,” he added, are neighborhoods where childhood vaccination coverage is below 70 percent.
Genetic sequencing of the Rockland County case, performed by the New York State Public Health Laboratory and confirmed by the CDC, showed a type of polio virus that indicates transmission from someone who received the oral vaccine against polio, according to a July health alert. The oral vaccine, which is not given in the United States, uses weakened virus to stimulate the immune system’s protection against infection.
In rare cases, an unvaccinated person can become infected this way, with the virus eventually returning to full strength, known as neurovirulence, according to Orange County Health Commissioner Irina Gelman.
In his county, which is also home to a large Orthodox Jewish population, only 58.7 percent of the population is fully vaccinated, far less than the New York state total of 80 percent, according to the press release from Friday. Rockland The county has a 60.3 percent vaccination rate, officials said.
The last natural cases of polio in the United States were recorded in 1979.
On Wednesday, the outbreak in Rockland County was causing few outward signs of concern. At four community health centers in Spring Valley, Monsey and Pomona, there were no signs urging unvaccinated residents to get free shots, despite a county vaccination rate of about 60 percent.
Most of the clinics were quiet and empty, although the sidewalks in the Orthodox Jewish enclaves of Spring Valley and Monsey were lined with mothers pushing strollers. If they were concerned, they kept it to themselves, with one woman after another saying she “had no opinion about it.”
Esther Miller, however, said she felt confident in the continued health of her five children, all of whom had been vaccinated against polio and other childhood diseases.
“It’s up to parents to keep their kids healthy,” said the 35-year-old Spring Valley resident, an Orthodox Jew. “Giving vaccines is what you can do to protect them. My mother vaccinated all her children. She was right on top. I do the same.”
Local officials said misinformation about the vaccine has contributed to low compliance. The polio vaccination rate among children in the county, which has the largest Orthodox population in the country, is only 42 percent, and nearly 30 percent of Rockland County’s total population is under 18.
Officials in London announced Wednesday that they are offering polio booster shots to children ages 1 to 9 after traces of the polio virus were found in the British capital’s sewage in June. Britain’s Health Safety Agency said on Wednesday that the vaccination program will begin in areas where traces of the virus have been detected and immunization rates are low.
The discovery in June prompted the UK to declare a rare “national incident”. No cases have been reported. The UK was declared polio free by the World Health Organization in 2003.
Adela Suliman and Rachel Pannett contributed reporting from London