“We’re dealing with a trifecta. Covid is still here. Polio, we’ve identified polio in our sewage. And we’re still dealing with monkeypox,” New York Mayor Eric Adams said Friday on CNN’s New Day. “We address threats when they come to us, and we are prepared to deal with them and with the help of Washington, DC.”
In a report on the sewage discovery, New York officials underscored the urgency to keep up-to-date with polio vaccines, especially for those in the New York metro area.
Most people in the United States are protected from polio because of vaccination. Provides a primary series of three vaccines
99% protection. However, unvaccinated and undervaccinated people are vulnerable.
“Even if every case of paralytic polio is identified, hundreds more may go undiagnosed,” said state health commissioner Dr. Mary D. Bassett said. “Poliovirus detected in sewage samples in New York City alarming, but not surprising.”
The virus is usually spread through feces and urine
less common When someone infected with the polio virus sneezes or coughs. It says that 90% of people infected with polio have no obvious symptoms
World Health Organization. Some people have flu-like symptoms like sore throat, fever, fatigue and nausea.
About 1 in 25 people have viral meningitis, an infection of the spinal cord and/or the lining of the brain.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 1 in 200 people will have a stroke and experience some form of weakness in their arms, legs or both. Even children who have fully recovered from the initial illness may develop muscle pain and weakness
Years later. Rheumatoid arthritis can lead to permanent disability and death because it can affect the muscles used to breathe.
City Health Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan said that with polio spreading in our communities, “nothing is more important than vaccinating our children against this virus, and if you are an unvaccinated or incompletely immunized adult, please make the choice now. Get vaccinated.”
CDC testing for polio in New York
The sewage discovery comes after residents in Rockland County, New York, were diagnosed with paralytic polio on July 21, and sewage samples from Rockland and Orange counties in May, June and July.
A CDC official
told CNN This week’s case in Rockland County is “the very, very tip of the iceberg” and suggests “several hundred cases are circulating in the community.”
The agency sent a forensics team to Rockland County last week to investigate the case and help with vaccinations. A community health leader who met with the team told CNN that investigators were “very nervous” that polio “could mushroom out of control very quickly and we could have a crisis on our hands.”
Before the invention of the vaccine, polio was considered “one of the most feared diseases in America.”
According to the CDC. In the 1940s, it was disabled
An average More than 35,000 people a year in the United States. After the polio vaccine became available in 1955, the number of cases decreased significantly.
The last case in the US was reported about a decade ago.
Routine vaccine coverage among New York City children has declined since 2019, officials say.
Just mention that 86.2% of NYC children ages 6 months to 5 years have received three doses of polio vaccine, meaning nearly 14% are not fully protected.
Some children missed vaccination appointments because of the epidemic. Others live in small groups of ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in New York, including Rockland County, who have made the decision not to vaccinate their children. Others in
Religious Jewish community In partnership with public health officials in Rockland, they have adopted efforts to educate those who refuse to vaccinate their children.
In some New York City neighborhoods, vaccination rates are significantly lower than in other cities. In Williamsburg, for example, only 56.3% of children are vaccinated. In Battery Park City, it’s 58%. In Bedford-Stuyvesant/Ocean Hill/Brownsville, it was 58.4%.
At the national level, The vaccination rate for children is almost 93%.
“The risk to New Yorkers is real, but protection is simple: get vaccinated against polio,” said Wasson, the city’s health commissioner. “Polio is completely preventable, and its resurgence should be a call to action for all of us.”
CNN’s Elizabeth Cohen, Daniel Herrmann and John Bonifield contributed to this report.
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