Polio vaccination rate for 2-year-olds in Monroe area is 31% as polio virus circulates
Just 31% of 2-year-old children in the Monroe ZIP code have been vaccinated against polio at a time when the dangerous virus has been shown to be circulating among unvaccinated people in that area.
The state Department of Health released polio vaccination rates for Orange County ZIP codes on Friday, just as it had done earlier for ZIP codes in neighboring Rockland County. Both counties − along with Sullivan County and New York City − are known to have had polio circulating for months as a result of sewage tests that were done after an unvaccinated Rockland County man suffered paralysis in June from the previously eradicated disease.
Orange County already was known to have a low rate of 59% of 2-year-olds who had gotten the three polio shots experts recommend they have by the time they are 18 months old. The statewide average for the 57 New York counties outside New York City is 79%.
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The new data gives a more localized look at the wide range of polio vaccination rates within the county. At the high end were the 96% rate in the Rock Tavern area and 93% in Slate Hill. At the low end were Monroe and Bloomingburg, which straddles Orange and Sullivan counties and had a 41% rate. The West Point ZIP Code had a 15% rate, which may have been skewed by the fact that military posts don't report immunizations to the state.
The Monroe ZIP code − which includes the villages of Kiryas Joel, Monroe, South Blooming Grove and part of the town of Monroe − is part of the sewage service area that sends wastewater to the Orange County treatment plant in Harriman. Wastewater samples taken at that plant in June, July and August were found to have traces of polio genetically linked to the strain that the Rockland man caught in June.
No one else in New York is known to have been paralyzed since then despite the signs of the silent spread of the disease, which can be detected in wastewater because infected people excrete the virus. Most people who catch polio show no symptoms, allowing it spread without raising alarm. Roughly 1 in 200 people with polio are paralyzed.
Health officials have been urging unvaccinated people to get their polio shots and parents to get their children's vaccinations up to date since the reemergence of polio in Rockland, the first U.S. case in years. The polio vaccine is highly effective and had eliminated the disease through routine immunizations, a series of shots that start at age 2 months.
The lowest polio vaccination rates in Rockland County were 37% in the Monsey ZIP code and 57% in Spring Valley. Rockland as a whole has a below-average rate of 60%, similar to Orange.
Polio vaccination rates among school children in Orange and Rockland are much higher, suggesting that parents in areas like Monroe and Monsey who are behind on their 2-year-olds' shots eventually get them by the time their kids reach school age and are required by state law to be immunized.
State data reported by the USA Today Network in August showed that most Hudson Valley schools generally had perfect or high polio vaccination rates, with some outliers lagging far behind in spite of the state mandate. Those figures show, for example, that several schools in Kiryas Joel's United Talmudical Academy, the community's largest religious school system, reported polio vaccination rates of 99% or 100%.
Chris McKenna covers government and politics for the Times Herald-Record and USA Today Network. Reach him at cmckenna@th-record.com.
This article originally appeared on Times Herald-Record: Polio vaccination rate for 2-year-olds in Monroe area is 31%
