Photo Illustration by Erin O’Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty and CDC
Polio has reappeared in the United States for the first time in a generation. On July 18, the New York State Department of Health told the U.S. Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention it had detected the poliovirus, which can cause paralysis or death in a small percentage of cases, in a young adult from Rockland County outside New York City.
New York authorities subsequently detected the virus in sewage in Rockland and neighboring Orange County—evidence of transmission in the local community.
That first case prompted authorities in the U.K. and Israel to up their surveillance—they found polio too.