Polio is now spreading in cities like New York, London and Jerusalem.Eric Cio-Pea is the director of global health for Northwell Health."For most people, it means check your vaccination status and make sure you're vaccinated against polio," Cio-Pea said. New York City health officials are on high alert after a recent detection of Polio virus in the city's wastewater. "We eradicated Polio from the United States using vaccination. The only reason why it's back is because some people have opted not to vaccinate either their children or themselves. There is no other way that Polio can exist in the United States, period," Cio-Pea said.Last month, a case of paralysis from Polio was identified in an unvaccinated young adult in Rockland County, 30 miles north of New York City. Dr. Jos Romero is the director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. "It's the rare case that causes paralysis, so that means there must be several hundred other cases in the community circulating before you see this one case," Romero said. The CDC says about one out of every four infected people have flu-like symptoms. It can sometimes be confused with other illnesses."That is, you know, one of the reasons why it's called a silent killer is because, you know, it's really tough to predict who's going to have that other than the fact that they're not fully vaccinated," Cio-Pea said.The CDC says roughly one in 200 infections can lead to partial or full paralysis.Between two and 10 out of 100 of those people die. For the first half of the 20th century, Polio terrified parents around the world.Experts say the virus mainly affects children under five, but any person can get it if not vaccinated. Health experts say it can spread and mutate into a harmful version of the virus in under-vaccinated communities. In Rockland County, vaccination rates are about 60%, compared with 93% nationwide. "In Rockland County, there was communities where we dropped below the acceptable vaccination rates that herd immunity was no longer protective and we started seeing cases again," Cio-Pea said.The CDC says Polio virus is very contagious and spreads through person-to-person contact, contaminated food, and unsanitary water conditions.
LONDON (AP) — For years, global health officials have used billions of drops of an oral vaccine in a remarkably effective campaign aimed at wiping out polio in its last remaining strongholds — typically, poor, politically unstable corners of the world.
Now, in a surprising twist in the decades-long effort to eradicate the virus, authorities in Jerusalem, New York and London have discovered evidence that polio is spreading there.
The original source of the virus? The oral vaccine itself.
Scientists have long known about this extremely rare phenomenon. That is why some countries have switched to other polio vaccines. But these incidental infections from the oral formula are becoming more glaring as the world inches closer to eradication of the disease and the number of polio cases caused by the wild, or naturally circulating, virus plummets.
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Since 2017, there have been 396 cases of polio caused by the wild virus, versus more than 2,600 linked to the oral vaccine, according to figures from the World Health Organization and its partners.
“We are basically replacing the wild virus with the virus in the vaccine, which is now leading to new outbreaks,” said Scott Barrett, a Columbia University professor who has studied polio eradication. “I would assume that countries like the U.K. and the U.S. will be able to stop transmission quite quickly, but we also thought that about monkeypox.”
The latest incidents represent the first time in several years that vaccine-connected polio virus has turned up in rich countries.
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