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Novant pediatrician says not to panic over NY polio case

This 2014 illustration made available by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention depicts a polio virus particle. The polio virus has been found in New York City’s wastewater in another sign that the disease, which hadn’t been seen in the U.S. in a decade, is quietly spreading among unvaccinated people, health officials said Friday, Aug. 12, 2022. (Sarah Poser, Meredith Boyter Newlove/CDC via AP, File)

An unvaccinated adult in New York has contracted polio, causing concerns about a possible return of the disease. 

Dr. Sameena Hassan, a Novant Health pediatrician, says people should not panic about the discovery.

In addition to the diagnosed case, health officials in New York say the virus had also been found in wastewater samples. That suggests it was spreading among the unvaccinated.

Hassan says the threat of a polio outbreak poses a risk only if a large percentage of the community chooses not to vaccinate.

“Our population in the U.S. — which is incredibly well vaccinated against polio, and has been for many decades — is at very low risk from this one reported case.” 

Polio was once one of the nation's most feared diseases, with annual outbreaks causing thousands of cases of paralysis. In 1979, health officials declared that it had been eliminated in the U.S. That landmark was hailed as one of the nation's greatest public health victories. 

Yet cases have cropped up in the states occasionally since then — most recently in 2013 — often among people from or who had traveled to other countries.

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

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