US officially added to WHO’s list of poliovirus outbreak countries

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the United States has met the criteria to be listed as a country with circulating vaccine-derived polioviruses.

The US has joined around 30 other countries that have been affected by the disease, mostly low and middle income. The United Kingdom and Israel are two high-income countries that have detected the circulation of a strain of the disease.

The US was able to meet the criteria for the WHO's list by documenting a patient with vaccine-derived polioviruses and having at least one environmental sample. In July, health officials in New York's Rockland County reported a case of paralyticpolio in an unvaccinated resident who had not recently traveled. New York officials and the CDC have been watching the spread of the virus in wastewater since then. From April to August, there were positive samples.

It is a new low for the US to be included on the WHO's list. It reinforces a key global public health message in the campaign to eradicate that virus, which is that any form of it is a threat to children everywhere. Over the past several decades, anti-vaccine sentiment has gained ground in the country.

The majority of the US population is protected from the deadly disease, thanks to the vaccine. According to the CDC, children should get three doses of the vaccine by 24 months, followed by a fourth dose by 4 and 6 years old. Small pockets of states and counties can have low vaccine coverage. In Rockland County, the vaccine rate for 2-year-olds was 67 percent in 2020, but it fell to 60 percent today. One area of Rockland County has a vaccination rate as low as 37 percent, with a couple of others in the 50's.

Vaccination challenges

Anti-vaccine misinformation is a big problem for the disease. Oral vaccines, which use live, weakened polioviruses to spur immunity, are the main source of the current global outbreak of the disease. It is safe and affordable to get an oral polio vaccine. If they're used in areas with low vaccination rates, the vaccine Viruses can spread through poor Sanitation and/or Hygiene. If the vaccine continues to move from person to person, it can pick up new genes that will allow it to cause disease. The vaccine virus is no longer classified as a vaccine.

Anti-vaccine advocates such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Children's Health Defense have taken over the circulation of VDPV. The vaccine is very effective at preventing the disease. The lack of a vaccine causes an outbreak of the disease.

Since 2000, the US has not licensed or used oralpoli vaccine The US and many other high-income countries use a vaccine that doesn't contain a live virus. A VDPV is what is happening in the US. Someone who received a vaccine in another country is likely to have brought the vaccine into the US. The downside of using an inactivated vaccine is that it is not as potent as the oral vaccine, which means that people who get the vaccine will still be at risk for paralytic diseases.

The CDC and New York are trying to get people to get their vaccine. New York Governor Kathy Hochul declared a state emergency last week in order to increase vaccinations.

The director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases pressed that.

It is important that people in these communities who are unvaccinated get up to date on the vaccine right away. There is no cure for the disease and it's dangerous.