News

How Polio Secretly Spread, Returned To New York

Oct, 2022

For the first time in decades, Polio rendered a patient paraplegic in New York

The first incidence of polio in New York since 1990 occurred in June and involved an unvaccinated adult who had paralysis.

Following wastewater monitoring, it was discovered that the virus had been quietly circulating in the New York City region for months.

Although the virus's origin is still unknown, genetic analysis of samples from New York has connected them to polioviruses discovered in wastewater from London and Jerusalem.

A young adult from a New York City suburb after suffering weakness in their lower legs went to the hospital in June. The shocking discovery would prompt local authorities to announce a medical crisis in New York and put authorities all across the country and the world on high alert.

The Rockland County resident experienced a stomach ache, fever, constipation, and along with a stiff neck, and back, for five days. Enteroviruses are a family of diseases that, in extremely rare circumstances, can cause paralysis in the arms and legs. The patient was hospitalized and had an enterovirus test done.

The Wadsworth Center in New York and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would eventually verify the worse and: the young adult was paralysed as a result of acquiring polio, the first incidence of that in the United States in over ten years and the first in New York since 1990.

The patient was not immunized.

"I was shocked to my core. In particular, I never expected to see a case of polio in Rockland County, according to county health commissioner Dr. Patricia Schnabel Ruppert. A single case of paralytic polio is regarded by the CDC as a public health emergency in the United States.

Polio is a fatal, incurable illness that used to fill parents with dread every summer when transmission increased and threatened to paralyse their children.