New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said Friday the state was stepping up its polio-fighting efforts as the virus that causes the life-threatening disease was detected in the wastewater of yet another county in the New York City area.
Health officials began checking for signs of the virus in sewage water after the first case of polio in the United States in nearly a decade was identified in July in Rockland County, which is north of the city. The latest detection involved a wastewater sample collected last month in Nassau County on Long Island, directly east of the city.
The sample is genetically linked to the polio case from Rockland and provides further evidence of expanding community spread, state health officials said. The poliovirus had previously been detected in wastewater in New York City and three counties to its north: Rockland, Orange and Sullivan.
Hochul declared a state disaster emergency that allows EMS workers, midwives and pharmacists to administer polio vaccines and allows doctors to issue standing orders for the vaccine. Data on immunizations will be used to focus vaccination efforts where they’re needed the most.
“On polio, we simply cannot roll the dice,” state Health Commissioner Dr. Mary T. Bassett said in a prepared statement. “If you or your child are unvaccinated or not up to date with vaccinations, the risk of paralytic disease is real. I urge New Yorkers to not accept any risk at all.”
Health officials said all unvaccinated New York residents — including children by 2 months of age, pregnant people and those who haven’t completed their vaccine series — should get immunized immediately. They also urged boosters for certain people, such as healthcare workers in affected areas who treat patients who might have polio.
The statewide polio vaccination rate is 79%, but the counties of Rockland, Orange and Sullivan had lower rates.
Officials have said that it is possible that hundreds of people in the state have gotten polio and don’t know it. Most people infected with polio have no symptoms but can still give the virus to others for days or weeks.
The lone confirmed case in New York involved an unidentified young adult who was unvaccinated.
(AP)
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5 Responses
All this panic over one case
It’s just a way to keep you on your toes and in their control
Sariray, you are very stupid. You don’t put children’s lives at risk just to make a political statement.
For an informative video on what is considered by many as the real causes of polio, search: ‘Suzanne Humphries, MD, speaking on Polio & DDT’. A very comprehensive article on the issues concerning the polio vaccines: ‘The History of Polio in America and Other Countries’ (published by The National Vaccine Information Center).
In June of ‘2019, with an announcement by the State of less than a day’s notice, a hearing took place the next day in Albany. This vote was to ‘repeal’ the Children’s Vaccine Schedule Exemption. It slyly passed the following day with little media coverage or legislators’ remorse, despite many orthodox and others who took time on a Friday to protest in person upstate at the Capitol.
NY has for now, become one of just a few states that legally calls for home schooling as the only ‘non-vax’ option for school-age children attending schools in NY. This is tyrannical and a throwback to communism and fascism. Vaccine law is unproved theory.
The ‘schedule’ now mandates 72 doses of various vaccines for any school-attending children in NYS before the age of 18. It isn’t just one or several of these shots that have been shown to cause adverse affects – there is cause to show that each and every one of these can and does cause damage.
Those who nonetheless feel safe under the CDC guidance and would still insist on children who attend their schools to follow the ‘schedule’, should anyway not cause a split in Am Yisroel by standing in unnecessary separation from others in our community who feel vaccines to be a danger.
A state-instituted exemption must be put back into place, for those families who would wish a NYS state-based yeshiva or other education for their children without vaccination coercion.
The real point is that the credibility of the health community and government mandates has been completely undermined by Covid policies that are contrary to common sense. When they continue to insist that everyone get a Civid booster that is at best ineffective and unnecessary for the overwhelming majority of citizens, they don’t have much credibility when they say “But the polio vaccine is truly important “. Even though it actually is!
Did anyone actually get polio in New York. Virtually everyone alive has been vaccinated (and assuming children continue to be vaccinated on a routine basis), there is minimal public health reason to panic. People who regularly work with sewage are (in the industrialized countries) professionals who know better than to get themselves infected from the stuff they are dealing with. One suspects this is yet another example of politicians with no background in science (which is why they took up politics instead of doing something useful for a living) trying to grab power, since they make their living by having power and dispensing favors.