How Polio Crept Back Into the U.S. – By Robin Fields (ProPublica) / July 26, 2022
U.S. public health agencies generally don’t test wastewater for signs of polio. That may have given the virus time to circulate silently before it paralyzed a New York man.
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Update, July 26, 2022: This story has been updated to reflect preliminary results of wastewater tests.
About a month ago, British health authorities announced they’d found evidence suggesting local spread of polio in London.
It was a jolt, to be sure. The country was declared polio-free in 2003.
But at least no one had turned up sick. The proof came from routine tests of sewage samples, which can alert health officials that a virus is circulating and allow them to intervene quickly. Based on genetic analysis of those samples, officials in the United Kingdom moved to protect the city’s children by reaching out to families with kids under 5 who hadn’t been fully vaccinated.
Polio’s first appearance in almost a decade in the U.S., confirmed late last week by health officials in New York, would play out quite differently.
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