San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Fears rise of polio amid possible community spread
New York state health officials intensified their push for people who have not been immunized against polio to get vaccinated “right away,” saying one confirmed case of the disease found in the state may be “the tip of the iceberg” of a much wider threat.
The urgent call came last week as officials said polio had been detected in wastewater samples taken in several locations and at different times in two counties north of New York City, potentially signaling community spread of the disease.
“Based on earlier polio outbreaks, New Yorkers should know that for every one case of paralytic polio observed, there may be hundreds of other people infected,” Dr. Mary Bassett, state health commissioner, said in a statement.
“Coupled with the latest wastewater findings,” Bassett added, “the department is treating the single case of polio as just the tip of the iceberg of much greater potential spread.”
Polio is caused by the poliovirus and children younger than 5 are most at risk of contracting it, but anyone who is unvaccinated is at risk. Polio is highly contagious, typically spreading from person to person when someone comes into contact with the feces of an infected person and then touches their mouth.
Many cases are asymptomatic, and some can cause flu-like symptoms, but the disease, also known as poliomyelitis, can be disabling and even life-threatening. There is no cure.
Paralysis is a rare outcome, but before vaccines were widely available in the 1950s, polio outbreaks caused more than 15,000 cases of paralysis a year.
Last month, a case of polio — the first to be reported in the United States in nearly a decade — was identified in an unvaccinated man in Rockland County. No cases had originated in the United States since 1979.
The virus circulating in New York may have originated outside the United States, where the oral vaccine is still administered, officials said. The oral vaccine contains weakened virus. It is safe, but if vaccinederived virus circulates in a community, it can infect unvaccinated people and spread the disease.
In announcing the case, officials emphasized that the infected person was no longer contagious and said that their efforts would focus on increasing rates of vaccination and on determining whether anyone else might have been affected.