A forthcoming WHO decision on monkey fever

Health officials in the US state of New York have announced the discovery of a polio infection, the first reported in the US in nearly a decade.

The man who tested positive for the disease is an adult who lives in Rockland County, about 30 miles north of Manhattan, and said he became weak and paralyzed a month ago.

Both the New York State Department of Health and the Rockland County Department of Health urged health care providers to look for additional cases.

The health department also said that people who have not received polio drops should get vaccinated and those who are at risk of contracting the disease should get a booster dose.

The state Department of Health said in a statement that testing indicated that the highly contagious virus detected in Rockland County may have come from outside the United States. He said the patient had not received the vaccine.

In an analysis by state health experts, he said the case came from a weakened strain of the virus used in oral polio vaccines outside the United States and can sometimes cause infections, which is why it has been discontinued domestically since 2000.

He added that it is still not clear how and where the patient contracted the infection.

In turn, the newspaperThe New York TimesLocal authorities say the infected person belongs to the Orthodox Jewish community, which has been at the center of measles outbreaks in 2018 and 2019 due to relatively low vaccination rates among its members.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which confirmed the case, said there had been no polio cases in the US since 1979. The last known case of polio in the country was traced to a single person. Oral vaccine, in 2013.

Polio is usually asymptomatic, but it can cause flu-like symptoms such as sore throat, fever, fatigue and nausea, the CDC said.

In a small percentage of cases, polio attacks the nervous system and can cause irreversible paralysis.