First polio case in US in a decade

NEW YORK: New York State reported Thursday that it has detected a case of vaccine-derived polio in a person in Rockland County, north of New York City, the first such recorded case in the United States since 2013.

In a statement, the state department of health said the person, who was not identified, was infected with a type 2 vaccine-derived poliovirus, which would have come from oral polio vaccine used in a number of countries, but not the United States. The US stopped using oral polio vaccine in 2000.

The statement did not give details of the individual’s age or whether he or she had recently traveled outside the country. Kimberly Thompson, a polio expert who is president of the non-profit organization Kid Risk, said it’s not a surprise to see a vaccine-derived case pop up in this country, noting public health authorities in the United Kingdom recently discovered vaccine-derived polioviruses in sewage in London, indicating some transmission there.

“With Covid having disrupted immunization (even in the US) and travel now having resumed and much more type 2 poliovirus transmission happening … it’s been only a matter of time before we’d have some detection of polioviruses in sewage, as happened recently in the UK, or more tragically, a case,” Thompson told STAT in an email. “There’s just a lot more polio going around than there should be.”