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New York Declares State of Emergency After Finding Polio Virus in Wastewater

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New York declared a state of emergency Friday after detecting polio virus in Long Island wastewater. The discovery in Nassau County, Long Island, signals a more extensive virus spread within the state’s population.

In July, Rockland County confirmed the first case of polio in the United States since 1993. The county is less than 50 miles from New York City. Officials began testing waters in surrounding counties shortly after and found the virus in Orange and Sullivan counties’ wastewater.

State Health Commissioner Dr. Mary T Basset warns that one observed case of the paralytic disease usually signals hundreds of asymptomatic infected individuals. Even if an infected individual is asymptomatic, they may be contagious for days to weeks.

“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.”

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Polio is highly contagious. If infected, most people will have mild or no symptoms. A smaller percentage of infected individuals may develop more severe symptoms that affect the brain and spinal cord. According to the state’s health department, “New Yorkers should know that paralysis is the most severe symptom associated with polio because it can lead to permanent disability and death.”

The World Health Organization states that one in 200 infections leads to irreversible paralysis. Among the most vulnerable are children under five, who comprise a large percentage of the infected population.

Gov. Kathy Hochul signed an executive order Friday to expand the medical personnel who can administer the vaccine. EMS workers, midwives and pharmacists will be able to vaccinate individuals. Health care providers will also need to send immunization data to the New York State Department of Health so that officials can determine which counties are at the most risk and have the highest vaccine demand.

Officials are urging the public to vaccinate if they have not already done so. Dr. Basset told the public Friday, “do not wait to vaccinate” and “on polio, we simply cannot roll the dice.”

“If you or your child are unvaccinated or not up to date with vaccinations, the risk of paralytic disease is real.”

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Children can be vaccinated if they are two months or older. The statewide polio vaccination rate sits at around 79%. The counties with contaminated wastewater all had lower rates of vaccinations, and the confirmed case in July was in an unvaccinated adult.

Polio spreads through person-to-person contact. In the 1940s, polio disabled an average of more than 35,000 individuals and caused 15,000 cases of paralysis a year. Due to a widespread vaccine campaign beginning in 1955, polio cases fell to less than 100 in the 1960s.

People most susceptible to infection are those who never had the polio vaccine, who never completed the vaccine regimen or those who will be traveling to areas that could put them at a high risk of catching the virus.

Polio Vaccine

Polio Vaccine Could Provide Temporary Relief For Covid-19 Patients

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A vaccine to cure the Covid-19 virus has been health officials number one priority since this pandemic initially began a few months ago. Now, some experts are looking at polio vaccines as a baseline for providing temporary protection against the coronavirus. 

There’s already a slew of research and evidence that supports certain vaccines protect children against a wide range of infections, even beyond what the creators of the vaccine are even aware of; hence the desire to try it as a protection from Covid-19. According to a team of experts who recently discussed this option in Science Magazine, an oral polio vaccine is safe, cheap and already widely available. 

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Over 1 billion polio vaccines are produced every year, and they’re used in over 140 countries throughout the world. The vaccine alone has essentially eradicated polio as a disease, so there’s hope that it could help lead scientists to a Covid breakthrough. Like most vaccines, the polio one uses a weakened version of the polio virus itself to allow the body’s immune system to properly respond to/kill the infection. 

When vaccines contain a live-version of the virus within it, no matter how weakened, they typically are much stronger than annual vaccines, like the flu shot, and are much more long-lasting, which is why most of us barely remember even getting the polio vaccine. This is why scientists are hoping this particular vaccine could lead to one for the coronavirus, as a one-and-done vaccine would be the most ideal way to contain and eradicate the virus. 

“We propose the use of OPV (oral poliovirus vaccine ) to ameliorate or prevent COVID-19. Both poliovirus and coronavirus are positive-strand RNA viruses; therefore, it is likely that they may induce and be affected by common innate immunity mechanisms … Oral poliovirus vaccine in particular, could provide temporary protection against coronavirus disease,” said Konstantin Chumakov of the FDA and Dr. Robert Gallo of the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland, of the research team. 

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Dr. Gallo is famous for co-discovering the virus that causes AIDS and Chumakov has been working in the FDA’s vaccine division for years. The oral polio vaccine that these two are suggesting will also create something known as the “herd effect.” Herd “immunity” in the science community is when a majority of a given population (about 70%-90%) becomes immune from an infectious disease thanks to a vaccination. 

When new vaccines are created, it can be difficult to get the “herd effect,” or a majority of the population to get behind a vaccine that’s new to the market, however, based on the severity of the coronavirus and rate in which its been spreading, most individuals will likely want a vaccine the second it becomes available. 

Currently, the coronavirus has infected more than 2 million individuals in the United States alone. 114,000 Americans have died so far due to complications brought on by the coronavirus, and while not even experts are sure when a vaccine will become available, they’re hopeful that one of the hundreds of vaccine options out there will be ready by the beginning of 2021.