The polio virus has been found in New York City’s wastewater in another sign that the disease, which hadn’t been seen in the U.S. in a decade, is quietly spreading among unvaccinated people, health officials said Friday.
The presence of the poliovirus in the city’s wastewater suggests likely local circulation of the virus, the city and New York state health departments said.
State Health Commissioner Dr. Mary T. Bassett said the detection of poliovirus in wastewater samples in New York City is alarming but not surprising.
“The risk to New Yorkers is real but the defense is so simple — get vaccinated against polio,” New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan said in a statement. “With polio circulating in our communities there is simply nothing more essential than vaccinating our children to protect them from this virus, and if you’re an unvaccinated or incompletely vaccinated adult, please choose now to get the vaccine. Polio is entirely preventable and its reappearance should be a call to action for all of us.”
New York City is being forced to confront polio as city health officials are struggling to vaccinate vulnerable populations against monkeypox and adjusting to changing COVID-19 guidelines.
“We are dealing with a trifecta,” Mayor Eric Adams said Friday on CNN. “COVID is still very much here. Polio, we have identified polio in our sewage, and we’re still dealing with the monkeypox crisis. But the team is there. And we’re coordinating and we’re addressing the threats as they come before us, and we’re prepared to deal with them with the assistance of Washington, D.C.”
The announcement about the discovery of the polio virus in New York City comes shortly after British health authorities reported finding evidence the virus has spread in London but found no cases in people. Children ages 1-9 in London were made eligible for booster doses of a polio vaccine Wednesday.
In New York, one person suffered paralysis weeks ago because of a polio infection in Rockland County, north of the city. Wastewater samples collected in June in both Rockland and adjacent Orange County were found to contain the virus.
Most people infected with polio have no symptoms but can still give the virus to others for days or weeks. Vaccination offers strong protection and authorities urged people who haven’t gotten the shots to seek one immediately.
Based on past outbreaks, it is possible that hundreds of people in the state have gotten polio and don’t know it, officials said.
Polio was once one of the nation’s most feared diseases, with annual outbreaks causing thousands of cases of paralysis. The disease mostly affects children.
Vaccines became available starting in 1955, and a national vaccination campaign cut the annual number of U.S. cases to less than 100 in the 1960s and fewer than 10 in the 1970s, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A small percentage of people who contract polio suffer paralysis. The disease is fatal for 5-10% of those paralyzed.
All schoolchildren in New York are required to have a polio vaccine, but Rockland and Orange counties are both known as centers of vaccine resistance.
(AP)
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6 Responses
Wonder if you know why?
How is it possible that polio was ‘officially’ irraticated but is in the sewer system and we all know there are 1000’s of u via vaxxed kids where are all the cases?
In 🇮🇱 they keep on finding polio in the sewer, yet 35% kids by Haridim don’t take the OPV, where are all the cases?
Did you even bother to go to CDC.GOV take it directly from the horse 🐴 mouth, does the IPV protect against the OPV strain? The answer is NO!
So if the OPV strain was found why push a 💉 IPV that does nothing..?
When you’ll have the answer to this you’ll be able to have any opinion on the matter.
Josh your arrogance is baffling, u think that throwing around a few lines is a honest challenge to a huge and intricate subject as infectious diseases, how as a frum community who abhors outside influences we allowed ourselves to get swept in anti Vax and lumping most Vax in one basket, u remind me of a yungerman arguing on rav moshe with 2 marei mekomos
Let the conspiracy theories begin!
“Let the conspiracy theories begin!”
Sadly, more likely scenario is “let the cases begin”. It will probably require some actual instances of young people in the frum community suffering from polio before it is taken seriously by a small but rapidly growing “anti-vax” segment of residents. Except for the older generation, most don’t recall the tragic outcomes before the Salk Vaccine.
They are raising the alarm at a positive finding in the wastewater but refuse to test earlier samples, both for nyc and Rockland. It would be logical to assume that there was always polio in the wastewater from the tourists and migrants who received the opv vaccine, not to mention the flood of afghan refugees who may have the more dangerous wild type polio. It is absurd to raise the alarm now when they didn’t test earlier samples and don’t know if this was there throughout.
Meir G. Your your arrogance is baffling, u think that throwing around a few lines and a story of R Moshe is a honest challenge to a huge and intricate subject as infectious diseases? No its not.
Cdc, FDA, all agencies just proved their true faces and whom they are protecting. It ain’t me and you, it’s big pharma.
Now as for the ‘complexity of polio’, do you have any idea what Dr’s are thought in medical school about this? 1 page….
It’s a history lesson… ‘once upon there was polio, the vax irraticated it and make sure your patients get all Vaccines’. Don’t believe me? Ask any honest Doc.
As for my arrogance about polio, as long as I studied one page more than the above I’m more of an expert than Dr’s….
My point is that if you seriously study the facts you’ll see polio never went away. They stopped testing. The paralysis stopped for many reasons #1 the virus down mutates #2 read up on DDT #3 AFM a rebranding of polio.