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New York state health officials have found indications of additional cases of polio virus in wastewater samples from two different counties, leading them to warn that hundreds of people may be infected with the potentially serious virus. Just two weeks ago, the New York Health Department reported the nation's first case of polio in almost a decade, in Rockland County, north of New York City. Officials said that case occurred in a previously healthy young adult who was unvaccinated and developed paralysis in their legs. Since then, three positive wastewater samples from Rockland County and four from neighboring Orange County...

According to the state health department, testing done at a state lab and confirmed by the CDC showed that the virus is a vaccine strain Sabin type 2, which indicates that transmission occurred from someone who received an oral polio vaccine. Different from wild polio, which has been nearly eradicated globally, cases of vaccine-derived poliovirus occur when a live but weakened strain of virus that is included in vaccines spreads between people. Like wild polio, vaccine-derived poliovirus can cause paralysis. According to the state health department, it is the first case of vaccine-derived polio recorded in the United States since...

Health officials in the U.K. this month identified the country’s first polio outbreak in 40 years, and believe the outbreak was caused by a strain of polio found in the oral polio vaccine.Health officials in Britain warned parents on June 22 to ensure their children have been vaccinated against polio after multiple closely related versions of the virus that cause the disease were found in sewage water at the London Beckton Sewage Treatment Works — the largest water treatment plant in the U.K.“The Global Polio Laboratory Network has confirmed the isolation of type 2 vaccine-derived poliovirus (VDPV2) from environmental samples...

Poliovirus has been detected in sewage samples collected in London between February and May, the U.K. Health Security Agency said today. While there have been no cases of paralysis, investigations are underway to determine if there is any community transmission, the agency said.“Importantly, the poliovirus detected in the sewage — called vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 (VDPV2) — is not the same as wild polio. Vaccine-derived polio occurs if the weakened live virus in oral polio vaccines — which does not cause polio in the recipient, and is shed by vaccinated kids through their digestive system — circulates in under-vaccinated communities...

POLIO is spreading in the UK for the first time in decades, officials claim. Health bosses urged Brits to check their children's jabs are up to date after picking up signs of the virus being passed between individuals. Experts have detected the same bug in London sewage samples since April – a clear signal of a community outbreak. The last case of polio being contracted in Britain was in 1984 and the country was declared polio-free in 2003. Before a vaccine was introduced in the 1950s, epidemics would result in thousands of people being paralysed annually and hundreds of deaths....

Health authorities in Mozambique declared an outbreak of wild poliovirus on May 18, 2022 after confirming that a child in the north-eastern Tete province had contracted the disease. This marks the second imported case of wild poliovirus in southern Africa this year, following an outbreak in Malawi in mid-February 2022, the World Health Organization's (WHO) Regional Office for Africa said in a press release. The lone case so far, is the country's first since 1992. Genomic sequencing analysis indicates that the newly confirmed case is linked to a strain that was circulating in Pakistan in 2019, similar to the case...

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) slammed the Biden administration’s “illegal” vaccine-or-test mandate for large employers on the Senate floor Wednesday as Republicans prepared to force a vote on a resolution to overturn the directive. In his remarks, McConnell praised COVID-19 vaccines as “modern medical miracles” and noted that he had received a booster shot. “I’ve encouraged Kentuckians and all Americans to take full advantage,” he said. “I’ve recorded public service announcements, I am a survivor of childhood polio, I’ve watched vaccines obliterate polio in our country in my entire lifetime. Trust me, there is no bigger proponent of vaccination...

Genome sequencing has given rise to a new generation of genetically engineered bioweapons carrying the potential to change the nature of modern warfare and defense. Introduction Biological weapons are designed to spread disease among people, plants, and animals through the introduction of toxins and microorganisms such as viruses and bacteria. The method through which a biological weapon is deployed depends on the agent itself, its preparation, its durability, and the route of infection. Attackers may disperse these agents through aerosols or food and water supplies (1). Although bioweapons have been used in war for many centuries, a recent surge in...

First lady Jill Biden and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy kicked off their campaign to encourage child coronavirus vaccinations Monday by visiting the first school to inoculate children against polio in McLean, Virginia. The administration is pushing to get children ages 5-11 vaccinated. The Associated Press states that 28 million children are eligible for the shots now that the Pfizer vaccine was approved.

Forcing children who are not at risk for serious illness to receive a vaccine of marginal benefit undermines confidence in legitimate vaccine programs.California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate for schoolchildren age 12 and older — and other similar mandates popping up around the country — raises the question: For a patient population that predominately suffers only mild to no symptoms, is it ethical to coerce them to receive a vaccine that provides little benefit and causes rare but significant side effects?Why COVID-19 and Polio Aren’t The SameDuring the early 1950s, my parents waited and hoped that polio, an incurable,...

During an interview on this week’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday,” FNC’s Chris Wallace challenged Gov. Pete Ricketts (R-NE) for opposing President Joe Biden’s mandate for the COVID-19 vaccine but not for other diseases. Ricketts said, “We have been encouraging people to get vaccinated. We’ve been providing information encouraging people to reach out to their neighbors because vaccines work and they will help people. But it should be a personal health care choice. This is not something that the government should mandate, and somebody shouldn’t have to make the choice between keeping their job and getting a job in the...

Prior to the 1950s, paralytic polio was a scourge. FDR was crippled from it in while in his 30s, the March of Dimes was started to combat it, and photos of rows and rows of children in iron lungs were common in the media. And from this situation, vaccines were developed to combat the disease. Polio is caused by one of three types of poliovirus that can cause paralysis and death. In the 1950s, two vaccines were independently developed to combat it, one by Jonas Salk and the other Albert Sabin. [SNIP] In the early 1950s, Salk was the first...

Fauci must not have brushed up on his vaccine history before going on with Acosta. Both the smallpox vaccine and the polio vaccine faced loud opposition. When widespread smallpox vaccination began in the early 1800s in England, many parents opposed the vaccine and some clergy opposed it, calling it “unchristian” because it came from an animal, according to the College of Physicians in Philadelphia. Others opposed the vaccine because they distrusted medicine in general. Even then, some vaccine opponents objected because they believed the vaccine violated their personal liberty. This objection grew louder after Britain ordered mandatory vaccination for infants...

Amid sagging Covid-19 vaccination rates and stubborn levels of vaccine hesitancy, Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN on Saturday the United States’ successful campaigns to eradicate smallpox and polio in the last century wouldn’t have succeeded if those vaccines were subject to the same level of misinformation that currently surrounds coronavirus vaccines. In an interview with CNN, Fauci warned that some unvaccinated adults have been exposed to false information, are often skeptical of objective Covid-19 data and frequently justify their decision not to get vaccinated with “things that are really just not true.” After anchor Jim Acosta compared the situation to...

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday urged more Americans to get the coronavirus vaccine, as hesitancy toward the shots remains persistent among Republicans and some of his colleagues continue to cast doubt on the vaccinations. "I'm a huge fan of vaccinations as a polio victim myself when I was young," McConnell, who underwent extensive polio treatment as a boy in order to walk. "I'm perplexed by the difficulty we have in finishing the job," McConnell said of stamping out the virus once and for all despite "three highly effective vaccines."

2 workers risked their lives on frontlines to provide critical health services to vulnerable Somali children, UN says The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) confirmed Tuesday that two frontline workers were killed in a militant attack in Mogadishu. The UN said the polio workers risked their lives to provide critical health services to vulnerable Somali children and offered condolences to the families. ”I offer my sincere condolences to the families, friends and colleagues of two polio workers who were killed in Somalia earlier today. UNICEF condemns the attack in the strongest terms. Humanitarian workers are not a target,” UNICEF Executive...

When Vladimir Putin announced that his own daughter had received what he touted as a functional COVID-19 vaccine (despite the skepticism of most of the rest of the world), it was seen as a sign of his confidence in the treatment. But he wasn’t the first person to use his family to instill confidence in a new, swiftly created vaccine’s audience. On April 12, 1955, when 40-year-old Jonas Salk — who admittedly was not an authoritarian leader but a respected scientist and future Presidential Medal of Freedom winner — took center stage at the University of Michigan to triumphantly declare...

This really should be one of the biggest public health scandals of the decade, but instead it’s given little attention – mainly because of the high-profile nature of the people and organisations involved. The United Nations has been forced to admit that a major international vaccine initiative is actually causing a deadly outbreak of the very disease it was supposed to wipe-out. While international organisations like the World Health Organization (WHO) will regularly boast about ‘eradicating polio’ with vaccines—the opposite seems to be the case, with vaccines causing the deaths of scores of young people living in Africa. Health officials...

LONDON (AP) — The World Health Organization says a new polio outbreak in Sudan is linked to an ongoing vaccine-sparked epidemic in Chad — a week after the U.N. health agency declared the African continent free of the wild polio virus. In a statement this week, WHO said two children in Sudan — one from South Darfur state and the other from Gedarif state, close to the border with Ethiopia and Eritrea — were paralyzed in March and April. Both had been recently vaccinated against polio. WHO said initial outbreak investigations show the cases are linked to an ongoing vaccine-derived...

A new polio outbreak in Sudan has been linked to the oral polio vaccine that uses a weakened form of the virus. ... WHO said two children in Sudan, one from South Darfur state and the other from Gadarif state, close to the border with Ethiopia and Eritrea, were paralysed in March and April. Both had been recently vaccinated against polio. The WHO said initial outbreak investigations showed the cases were linked to a continuing vaccine-derived outbreak in Chad that was first detected last year and is now spreading in Chad and Cameroon. While so-called vaccine-derived polio is a known...