New York State reported Thursday that it has detected a case of vaccine-derived polio in an unvaccinated adult in Rockland County, north of New York City, the first such case in the United States since 2013.
The unidentified individual developed paralysis, said Beth Cefalu, Rockland County’s director of strategic communications. Polio paralysis is irreversible.
The area where the case was detected was the epicenter of a large measles outbreak in 2018-2019 that was fueled by low vaccination rates among communities of Hasidic Jews. The outbreak went on for so long that the country almost lost its measles-free status. The memory of that episode is provoking concern that the area might be ripe for additional vaccine-derived polio cases to occur.
“I think it’s concerning because … it can spread,” said Walter Orenstein, a polio expert at Emory University. “If there are unvaccinated communities, it can cause a polio outbreak.”
“The inactivated polio vaccine we have is very effective and very safe and could have prevented this,” he said. “We need to restore our confidence in vaccines.”