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Brittany Strickland was “deathly scared” when she learned that the United States had recorded its first polio case in nearly a decade; the 33-year-old had not been immunised against the crippling disease.
“Because my mother was an anti-vaxxer, I discovered that I had never received any polio vaccines as a child,” the designer told AFP after finally receiving a shot this week.
Strickland was immunised in Pomona, New York’s Rockland County, where the first US polio case since 2013 was discovered in July.
Since then, the virus has been found in wastewater samples from the surrounding area, as well as in a neighbouring county and in New York City sewage, indicating that the virus is spreading.
Experts are concerned that polio, once one of America’s most feared diseases but now only found in a couple of developing countries, will wreak havoc on the country once more.
“I thought it was a virus on its way out,” City University of New York virologist John Dennehy told AFP.
Rockland County is offering free shots to anyone who hasn’t been immunised.
The area, which is located 30 miles (48 kilometres) north of Manhattan, has a polio vaccination rate that is significantly lower than the national average.
According to New York’s health department, only 60% of two-year-olds have received a vaccine, compared to 79% statewide.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the national figure is 92 percent, with the first of four doses administered at two months of age.
Polio is a crippling and potentially fatal viral disease that primarily affects children under the age of five, but can be fatal in unvaccinated adults as well.
Before a vaccine was developed in the late 1950s, periodic outbreaks killed thousands of children and left thousands more in wheelchairs or leg braces.
In recent decades, a massive global effort has come close to eradicating the disease, with wild poliovirus now found only in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Polio cases in the United States were last reported naturally in 1979.
Polio is highly contagious and can be transmitted from person to person via stools, sneezes, coughs, and contaminated water before infected people show symptoms.
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Officials believe that the original source of the infection in the Rockland case was someone who had received the oral polio vaccine, which was discontinued in the United States in 2000.
OPV replicates in the gut and can be transmitted to others via contaminated water. While the variant is weaker than wild poliovirus, it can still cause serious illness and paralysis in unvaccinated people.
The July case involved a young man who had not been immunised and was paralysed by the disease, according to officials.
They claimed he had not travelled abroad, implying the disease had spread locally.
According to local media, the infected man was a member of the Orthodox Jewish community, where vaccine scepticism is common.
Rockland is home to a sizable Orthodox Jewish community. More than a dozen rabbis issued an open letter last week urging members to get vaccinated.
According to Shoshana Bernstein, an independent health communicator and Orthodox Jew who is educating members about the importance of immunisation, “any community that is more insular” is vulnerable to anti-vax messaging.
“The good news about polio is that we have elders in the community who can speak from firsthand experience. That makes a difference in a community that values the family system and its elders “According to AFP, she said.
While it is too soon to tell whether the single case is part of a smaller or larger outbreak, Dennehy fears it is only the “tip of the iceberg.”
“However, if a large number of people become infected, we will see an increase in paralytic polio.”
