Albany: State health officials in New York are warning of an expanding “community spread” of the polio virus after it was detected in wastewater samples from another upstate county. The state health department said Friday that poliovirus was detected in four samples from Sullivan County, two each in July and August. Sullivan County is several dozen miles northwest of Rockland County, where officials announced the first case of polio in nearly a decade in the United States on July 21. The unknown young adult had not been vaccinated.
Samples from Sullivan County are genetically linked to a case of paralytic polio in Rockland County. State health commissioner Dr. Mary T. Bassett again urged residents to make sure they are vaccinated, adding that “one New Yorker paralyzed by polio is already too many.”
“Polio in New York today is an imminent threat to all adults and children who have not been vaccinated or are not up to date on their polio vaccinations,” Bassett said in a prepared release.
The virus has now been identified in samples of wastewater in three adjacent counties north of New York City: Rockland, Orange and Sullivan. Polio virus has also been found in the sewage of New York City.
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Officials have said that it is possible that hundreds of people in the state may have got polio and they may not be aware of it. Most people infected with polio have no symptoms, but they can still pass the virus to others for days or weeks. Polio was once one of the country’s most dreaded diseases, with annual outbreaks causing thousands of cases of paralysis.