A new study from the C.D.C. provides more details about a polio case detected in New York last month, and suggests the virus has been spreading elsewhere for a year.
Polio may have been circulating widely for a year, and was present in New York’s wastewater as early as April, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A wastewater sample collected in April in Orange County, N.Y., tested positive for the virus, pushing back the earliest known detection in the area. Officials had previously announced that the virus had been found in wastewater samples dating back to May in neighboring Rockland County. Changes in the genome of the virus suggest that this version has been circulating, somewhere in the world, for up to a year. Genetically similar versions of the virus were detected in Israel in March and in Britain in June. The new study provides more details from a continuing investigation into a polio case detected in New York last month, when officials announced that a young adult in Rockland County had become paralyzed from polio. It was the first report of polio in the United States since 2013.
The findings are not altogether surprising, especially given that polio, which is highly contagious, often spreads without causing serious symptoms, said Joseph Eisenberg, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Michigan. “It can be circulating pretty extensively, being under the radar, before you actually start seeing paralysis cases,” In at least one of the county’s ZIP codes, just 37 percent of children under 24 months old have received three doses of the polio vaccine, according to the new study. The patient, who had not been vaccinated against polio, was hospitalized in June after developing symptoms including a fever, neck stiffness and lower-limb weakness, according to the study. Poliovirus, which spreads mainly through feces, was subsequently detected in the patient’s stool.
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