TAMPA, Fla. — The polio virus has made a comeback in the United States.
“We’ve got an outbreak going on now,” said Dr. Thomas Unnasch, Distinguished USF Health Professor.
The virus has been detected in New York. At least one person so far has been paralyzed as a result of this outbreak.
“I think it’s quite possible that it could spread to other states,” said Unnasch.
Health officials have warned of expanding community spread.
“The real issue here is making sure that our children and well everybody is fully vaccinated against polio,” said Unnasch.
Since many polio cases are asymptomatic, experts believe there could be hundreds of cases in New York already.
“What this means is that despite a large amount of effort, we still haven’t eradicated polio worldwide,” said Unnasch.
Polio was once one of the country’s most feared diseases and caused thousands of cases of paralysis.
It mostly affects children.
“The last thing that you really want is to have your child end up in an iron lung, or end up wearing those horrible braces that you used to see in the pictures in the 1940s, or end up dead for that matter,” said Unnasch.
While most people who get the virus won’t have any symptoms, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about one out of four people will show signs like muscle aches, diarrhea, fever, sore throat, nausea, and stomach pain.
Unnasch said, “5% will end up going into some sort of serious disease, and out of them, about 1% will actually end up paralyzed for life as a result of an infection."
The recent detection of the polio virus has triggered the need for more wastewater surveillance.
“They’re starting to wind up to do that. It’ll be an easy thing to do. They’ll be able to run it right against the COVID samples that they’re running right now. But this hasn’t been a problem in the United States since 1972. They haven’t exactly been testing for it regularly since it was thought to have been eliminated in the U.S.,” said Unnasch.
He believes when other places begin wastewater surveillance of the virus, we could find it in Florida too.
“I think they’ll ramp up on that, but I wouldn’t be surprised when they ramp up we’ll see, you know, a fairly decent number of positive samples. You can imagine with all the travel that we have worldwide and how much people move around, that we’ll start to see some of it turning up here and there,” said Unnasch.
The good news is anyone who is vaccinated is protected.
“If you’re fully vaccinated, you’ve got absolutely nothing to worry about,” said Unnasch.
However, the virus is a threat to all unvaccinated adults and children.
“We have pockets of people who haven’t been vaccinated, and if you haven’t been vaccinated, you’re just as susceptible to getting these diseases and having your child have this horrible outcome that we had 100 years ago,” said Unnasch.
Doctors are urging people to check their vaccination records and their children’s records to make sure they got the vaccine.
“People really need to do this. We really need to get our herd immunity really up to the point where we don’t have a problem with this anymore,” said Unnasch.
