Health officials in the US state of New York announced the discovery of a polio infection, the first to be reported in the United States in nearly a decade.
Officials said the person who tested positive for the disease is an adult and lives in Rockland County, about 30 miles north of Manhattan, noting that he became weak and paralyzed about a month ago.
Both the New York State Department of Health and the Rockland County Health Department urged health care providers to look for additional cases.
Health departments also said that people who have not been vaccinated against polio should get the vaccination and that those at risk of exposure should get a booster dose.
The state Department of Health said in a statement that the examination indicated that the case detected in Rockland County for the highly contagious virus may have come from outside the United States. She explained that the patient did not receive the vaccination.
She added that an analysis by state health experts found that the case came from a weakened strain of the virus used in oral polio vaccines outside the United States and can sometimes cause infection, which is why it has been discontinued locally since 2000.
She added that it was not yet clear how or where the patient was exposed to the infection.
In turn, the newspaperThe New York TimesLocal officials say the infected man is a member of the Orthodox Jewish community, which was the epicenter of a measles outbreak in 2018 and 2019, due to the relatively low vaccination rates among its members.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which confirmed the case, said that there have been no cases of polio originating in the United States since 1979. It added that the last known infection of polio in the country was found to have come from an oral vaccine, in 2013.
The CDC stated that polio is usually asymptomatic, but it can cause flu-like symptoms such as sore throat, fever, fatigue and nausea.
In a small percentage of cases, polio attacks the nervous system and can cause irreversible paralysis.