US records first polio case in a decade – report

New York health officials have said that a young adult in the city has become the first US resident in nearly a decade to contract polio.

According to the BBC, the unnamed patient in Rockland County is said no longer to be contagious, but has developed paralysis from the virus. The last known US case of the highly contagious virus was recorded in 2013.

Officials say the person was unvaccinated, and was probably exposed to an individual who received a vaccine that contains the weakened live virus.

The report says that Americans are typically vaccinated with a three- or four-dose regimen that begins at two months old. About 93% of toddlers have received at least three doses of the polio jab, according to vaccination data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

However, while the US and other countries use jabs made with an inactivated version of the virus, some countries orally administer a vaccine that uses the virus in a weakened live form.

Once feared across the US, the disease was largely eradicated by a national vaccination campaign that began in 1955. Annual cases quickly fell from fewer than 100 in the 1960s to fewer than 10 in the 1970s – and the US was declared polio-free by 1979.

In the decades since, isolated cases of polio infection have been brought into the country by foreign travellers.

Mostly affecting children, the virus causes muscle weakness and paralysis, and in the most serious cases permanent disability and death.

[Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/unicefethiopia/22116669718]