First Polio Case in Nearly a Decade Is Detected in New York State

Officials said one case of polio has been identified in an unvaccinated adult man in Rockland County.

The New York State Department of Health and its Rockland County counterpart confirmed that the infection was transmitted from someone who received the oral polio vaccine, which has not been administered in the United States since 2000. Officials said in a news release that the virus may have originated outside the United States, where the oral vaccine is still administered.

“I want to emphasize that this person is no longer contagious,” Rockland County Executive Ed Day said at a news conference Thursday afternoon. “Our efforts are now focused on two issues: vaccination and finding out if anyone else has been affected by this disease.”

Officials said people who have not been vaccinated or who have not completed their vaccination series should get vaccinated. The current polio case presents little risk to people who have already been vaccinated against polio: people who have had all three shots have almost 100 percent protection.

At the news conference, Rockland County Health Commissioner Dr. Patricia Schnabel Rupert said the person’s symptoms began about a month ago. The patient presented with “weakness and paralysis”, she said, and the department was informed about the confirmed case on Monday.

“We are now surveying the family and close contacts of this individual to assess the risk to the community,” Dr Rupert said. She did not share any additional information about the patient’s current health status or prognosis.

Although health officials did not reveal the patient’s gender, local elected officials said he was a man from the Orthodox Jewish community. In 2018 and 2019, there were outbreaks of measles among ultra-Orthodox Jewish people in Rockland County, who had lower vaccination rates than the wider population. In that outbreak, more than 150 people were infected with measles.

The last case of polio in the United States was in 2013 in someone who brought the disease from abroad. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, not a single case has been reported in the United States since 1979.

By the 1950s, when the first vaccine was developed, the disease was one of the most feared in the country.

According to state data, 60 percent of 2-year-olds in Rockland County have received all three doses of the polio vaccine—a rate far lower than the 80 percent rate in the rest of the state except New York City.

The target vaccination rate for achieving herd immunity for polio is 80 percent, according to the World Health Organization.

According to some studies, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccination rates for children around the world and routine immunization in the United States have decreased. Misinformation and mistrust related to COVID vaccines has also affected childhood vaccination rates, as more parents expressed apprehension about long-established vaccines.

Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security Senior Scholar Dr. Amesh A. Adalja said vaccine hesitancy could give vaccine-derived polio strains “a chance for harm” in a community where large numbers of people have not been vaccinated.

Polio is very contagious, the Department of Health said in a news release. People can spread the disease even if they do not have symptoms, which can include fatigue, fever, headache, muscle aches, and vomiting. Rarely, cases of polio can cause paralysis or death.

The oral vaccine is safe and effective and is still given in countries where vaccine access is more limited. However, people who receive an oral vaccine, which contains a weakened version of the virus, can release the virus.

The shedding facility was initially thought of as a benefit, Dr. Adalja said.

“It mimics natural infection, and people release the virus, the vaccine virus, and that’s spread to other people, and then they become immune that way,” he said. In very rare cases, the virus in the vaccine can mutate as it travels from person to person and causes paralysis in someone who hasn’t been vaccinated, he said.

The United States uses an injectable polio vaccine that contains the inactivated virus instead of the live virus.

Jesse McKinley Contributed to reporting.