Health officials in New York are reporting that a 20-year-old man has been diagnosed with polio, suffered paralysis and was hospitalized.
According to health officials, the man traveled to Poland and Hungary and brought the disease back to his home in New York.
News4JAX talked with local physician Dr. Mohammed Reza Friday about the significance of this one case.
“This is the first time where there was a diagnosis of polio in the past decade,” Reza said. “Look back in the 1940s, polio was a devastating infection. It left close to 35,000 Americans with disabilities, with weakness and paralysis.”
Health officials say the 20-year-old patient was not vaccinated for polio. In the United States, most people are vaccinated against polio, with a series of shots they received as a baby.
“Those three shots provide us a 99% protection against polio infection,” Reza said. That includes Dr. Reza’s own 7-month-old daughter who was vaccinated for polio last week.
It’s unclear how the patient contracted polio but we do know he was traveling overseas and came back home.
A person contracts polio through saliva or fecal matter, making it very important that you wash your hands.
Since most Americans are vaccinated, Reza believes there is a low chance that this could grow to be a major health threat. However, health officials will do contact tracing to see who else may have been exposed to this disease.
According to Dr. Reza -- a person could have little to no symptoms -- or in some cases the symptoms may not show up for 30 days and potentially infect many other people. So, it will be important to see if more infections are linked to this one man. We know that he has recovered and is at home with his family.