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Rare Case of Polio Prompts Alarm and an Urgent Investigation in New York [1]
['Jesse Mckinley', 'Nate Schweber']
Date: 2022-07-22
Such vaccines have not been administered in the United States since 2000, suggesting that the virus may have “originated in a location outside of the U.S. where O.P.V. is administered,” according to county officials. The oral vaccine is safe, but people who are unvaccinated can become infected if vaccine-derived virus is circulating in a community.
County officials said the strain in question could be spread by those “who come in contact with stool or respiratory secretions, such as from a sneeze, of an infected person.”
The person exhibited symptoms about a month ago, according to Rockland County’s health commissioner, who said on Thursday that the patient had suffered from “weakness and paralysis.”
Mr. Backenson noted that only a tiny percentage of cases would develop into severe paralysis but that many of those infected with the polio virus would remain asymptomatic, which could make it difficult to detect to what degree the disease had spread.
“That’s probably the biggest concern: You may have a lot of people out there who may never have severe paralytic polio but could potentially be spreading it to others,” he said. “That’s the reason for the urgency.”
On Friday, Rockland County officials said that “the person did not travel outside the country during what would have been the transmission window,” adding that “up to 95 percent of people infected have no symptoms, which makes tracking down the transmission difficult.”
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[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/22/nyregion/rockland-county-polio-unvaccinated.html?searchResultPosition=1
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