Polio Symptoms and Prevention: What to Know

The CDC estimates that one in 200 people with polio experience paralysis or weakness in the arms, legs, or both. The paralysis usually occurs on one side of the body, explains pediatric infectious disease specialist Dr. Gail Shust said. In rare cases, polio-related paralysis can be fatal, as the virus can affect the muscles that aid in breathing.

Even after recovering from polio, after 15 to 40 years they may have muscle pain, weakness or paralysis. Children recovering from polio can experience post-polio syndrome as adults, characterized by muscle weakness, fatigue, and joint pain, decades after their initial infection. It is not clear why only some people develop post-polio syndrome, but people who have experienced severe cases of polio may be more susceptible.

How is polio spread?

Polio is very contagious. It spreads from person to person – usually, when someone is in contact with the stool of an infected person and then touches their mouth. This is especially a concern for children under the age of 5, who, Dr. Esper said, may struggle with hand hygiene. “Every adult who has children knows how germs are spread,” he said. Less commonly, polio can be spread when droplets from an infected person sneeze or cough enter someone’s mouth.

And as with COVID-19, it is possible to spread the virus even when someone does not have symptoms.

The oral polio vaccine, which helped the United States eliminate polio and is no longer administered in the country, contains a weakened live poliovirus. It is safe and effective, but in very rare cases, the virus weakened by the vaccine can return in a form that can cause paralysis in other people. This is primarily a concern for non-vaccinated people, to whom vaccine-derived viruses can be spread, and immune-compromised people who have not developed immunity to the vaccine. In exceptionally rare cases — one in every 2.4 million doses of an oral vaccine — the weakened live virus can cause paralysis in a person receiving the vaccine, said Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine specialist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. But the main concern is that the vaccine virus can spread and spread in less-immunized communities.

Health officials in New York confirmed that the person in Rockland County had been in contact with someone who had received the oral polio vaccine, which had turned into a pathogenic form of the virus. The person in Rockland County had not been vaccinated, leaving them vulnerable to becoming ill with polio.

The oral polio vaccine has not been administered in the United States since 2000. Today, the polio vaccine in the United States is a highly effective shot, which does not contain a live virus, unlike the oral vaccine.