As if COVID and monkeypox weren’t enough, the unfortunate plague news keeps on coming: Polio is back. The virus-caused disease, which the United States hasn’t had a case of in nearly 20 years, has been detected recently in multiple New York counties, as well as the U.K. and Israel.
“There is currently a simultaneous, new polio epidemic in the U.K. and the United States,” William Haseltine, PhD, author of My Lifelong Fight Against Disease: From Polio and AIDS to COVID-19 and former Harvard Medical School professor, tells Mic. So far this summer, officials in the U.S. have found the virus in wastewater systems in New York State’s Rockland and Orange Counties, and New York City. As of now, only one person has tested positive for the virus — a young, unvaccinated adult in Rockland County who is now paralyzed as a result of the disease — though health officials suspect there are many more cases circulating.
