| US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Archyde.com © News1 |
It was the first case of polio in the United States in regarding 10 years. According to local reports such as Archyde.com, AFP and CNN and the Washington Post (WP) on the 21st (local time), it was reported that the first case of polio in 2013 was found in Rockland County, New York.
Polio, which penetrates the nervous system and rapidly paralyzes it, mainly affects children under 5 years of age.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the case is believed to have been transmitted by a mutant virus that originated outside the United States.
It raises the possibility that a wild-type virus in people who received oral polio vaccine (OPV), a live ‘live vaccine’, with a weakened pathogen, might cause a very unusual and rare mutant virus in a population with weakened immunity.
Currently, it is reported that wild-type polio virus is rare in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Health officials said that polio might not occur in the United States where OPV was administered, and that it was presumed to be a mutant infection from cases that occurred in other regions.
OPV replicates in the gut and can be transmitted through sewage. Although it is not contagious between vaccinated children, cases of infection may occur in areas with low vaccination rates, the CDC said.
Before a vaccine was developed and distributed, polio was so contagious that there were 350,000 cases in 125 countries around the world. In the late 1940s, there were regarding 35,000 cases of polio in the United States each year.
After vaccination was started, the incidence of polio plummeted in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Since 1988, the incidence has decreased by 99%, and OPV vaccination was discontinued in the United States in 2000.
Health authorities announced that they would investigate the exact route and cause of the infection and take prudent measures to protect the health of residents.
The last natural case of polio in the United States was in 1979. There have been no cases of transmission from travelers with polio since 1993.
For decades, polio vaccination of babies and young children worldwide has been progressing and the incidence has been significantly reduced.
Polio penetrates the nervous system and paralyzes the body in a short time, and its representative symptoms are known to be flu-like symptoms such as sore throat, fever, fatigue, and nausea.
Meanwhile, in June, the polio virus was detected in a sewage sample in London, drawing attention.
Since the 1980s, there have been concerns that polio may be transmitted to the UK, but there have been no cases of polio, the authorities said.