On Thursday, health authorities in the state of New York announced a case of polio, marking the first occurrence of the disease in the United States in over ten years.
The authorities did not immediately provide any information on the identity of the Rockland County citizen, whether or not he had been vaccinated, or his present status.
Officials from the state said it seemed as if the individual had a strain of the virus that was generated from the vaccination. It is possible that the virus was disseminated by someone who had a live vaccine, which is accessible in other countries but not in the United States.
There was a time when polio was one of the most dreaded illnesses in the United States. Annual outbreaks of the disease caused thousands of instances of paralysis, most of which occurred in youngsters.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), beginning in 1955, vaccines were made available, and a widespread immunization effort lowered the yearly number of polio cases to less than a hundred in the 1960s and less than ten in the 1970s.
In 1979, the United States met the criteria to proclaim that polio had been eradicated from the nation, which meant that the virus was no longer routinely disseminated across the country. Infections with polio have been carried into the United States by travelers on very rare occasions, with the most recent instance being in 2013.
Polio vaccination is still widely administered to youngsters in the United States. Officials from the federal government suggest administering the vaccine in a total of four doses spaced out as follows: between the ages of two and four months, between six and 18 months, and between the ages of four and six years. There are certain states that just need three doses.
The most current statistics on childhood vaccinations provided by the CDC revealed that around 93 percent of children aged 2 years old had received at least 3 doses of the polio vaccine.
The virus that causes polio often passes from person to person or is carried in polluted water. It is possible for it to infect a person’s spinal cord, which may lead to paralysis and, in some cases, lifelong impairment as well as death. Children are the most common victims of this illness.
Polio is considered to be endemic in Afghanistan and Pakistan; nevertheless, in recent years, instances have also been recorded in a great number of other countries in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. After the polio virus was discovered in London sewage samples, health authorities in Britain issued a warning to parents one month ago to ensure that their children had been vaccinated against the disease. However, there were no reports of anybody being paralyzed.
