NEW YORK (AP) — 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.
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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.”
The announcement 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 polio suffer paralysis. The disease is fatal for between 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.
The jokes and sarcasm on this forum are a shanda. Stop playing with fire and get your family vaccinated , pronto .
This happens when you listen to your sheitelmacher instead of your physician.
The Chasidim are trying to recreate the Alte Heim. When their communities are being ravaged by Polio, Typhus, Tuberculosis and Cholera they’ve reached their goal.
I love it and my shareholder$ will love thi$
It’s sad, but the reality is not that we don’t want to prevent polio, but that we can’t trust the mess that our FDA has become. The vast majority have learned these past few years that the FDA works for big pharma not the patients. And that many of their decisions are all about profit not health.
IF we could trust the health agencies to properly test these drugs, we wouldn’t feel so scared to inject them into our kids. But the reality is, the formula for vaccines has hardly changed in decades, and there is zero push for any safety studies or improvement because , why should they. They have a solid market, nobody questions their products, and they’re immune from ALL liability. I mean ALL. According to Supreme Court justice sotamayer, she said vaccines are unavoidably unsafe, and that the current government setup means the companies have no pressure to ever improve their products due to no liability.
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 website 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.
Lock the whole city down and social disabuse ushmartem moed