In two New York counties, city health officials have been tackling a worrying trend: polio samples showing up in wastewater. In one county, a young adult became sick and paralyzed from the disease.
Polio - it was the disease we all thought we could put behind us. And yet earlier this summer, an individual in New York state contracted the virus and ended up paralyzed - the first such case in decades. NPR's Ari Daniel visited the counties on the front lines of what could be a critical moment in U.S. public health.
DANIEL: During COVID, Montel worked on the county's COVID vaccine information campaign alongside Shoshana Bernstein, who calls herself a health communicator. The news of paralytic polio had her in knots. DANIEL: Meaning there are more cases, potentially way more cases of polio in these communities than just a single paralytic patient. Then when the county started testing the wastewater for polio, there it was again. Samples taken from both counties going back to May were positive for polio. Then, sequencing the virus's genetic material surfaced something else that was unsettling.
DANIEL: So how did the virus get here? Here's what authorities think happened. A person came to New York state infected with polio they had likely contracted in another country. They probably were asymptomatic and didn't realize they had the virus. Once they got to New York, where some communities have low vaccination levels, the virus started spreading, eventually causing infection and paralysis in a person in Rockland County.
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