Altamonte Springs will begin testing for poliovirus in Orange and south Seminole county wastewater after a case was found in New York.
The virus was detected for the first time since 2013 in an unvaccinated New York man about a month ago. It was then found in New York City wastewater and appears to be circulating throughout the city, New York’s state health department announced last week.
Altamonte Springs City Manager Frank Martz on Monday said the molecular lab used by the city will finish developing and validating the polio test over the next few weeks.
“We believe that testing sewage is a huge benefit for public health, and to have early warning systems in place,” Martz said over email. “We also strongly believe that it is fiscally conservative … to find multiple uses for infrastructure. Doing wastewater-based epidemiology has been a great tool to detect COVID, and will be a great tool going forward.”
Sewage testing for COVID-19 has previously been likened to a “doppler radar” for giving early warning of coming outbreaks.
In addition to Altamonte, Orange County and other Central Florida entities have tested sewage for COVID-19 since 2020.
Orange County Utilities spokesperson Debbie Sponsler said Monday that Orange has no current plans to check for polio in its wastewater but may in the future if a case is identified in the area.
Polio is a very different virus than COVID-19 and poses little to no threat to Central Florida, said Tom Unnasch, a University of South Florida distinguished health professor. He said the U.S. is protected by decades of vaccination against this illness.
“There’s not enough people out there who are susceptible to really allow this virus to get a real foothold,” Unnasch said.
Further, while COVID-19 can easily spread through the air, polio is harder to transmit because it spreads “almost exclusively” through contact with the feces of an infected person, primarily through infected drinking water, Unnasch said.
“Unless you’re shaking hands with somebody who’s got polio, and you haven’t been vaccinated, and they didn’t wash their hands … that’s about the only way you’re going to get it,” Unnasch said.
Unnasch added that Rockledge County, where the New York patient lives, has an abnormally low polio vaccination rate. Around 60% of 2-year-olds have gotten the recommended shots, according to The New York State Department of Health.
In contrast, 84% of Florida 2-year-olds have been vaccinated against polio along with the standard seven-vaccine series that has long been mandated in order for kids to attend daycare or any type of school.
The polio vaccine used in the U.S. protects against severe disease in at least 99% of cases, lasts a lifetime after four doses, and typically has mild side effects, the CDC’s website says.
Unnasch also said it’s somewhat normal for a virus to still exist in low levels even if it has disappeared. It’s possible polio comes back to the U.S. more often than realized but just isn’t noticed, he added.
Wastewater testing just over the past few years has allowed cities to detect things they never could before, he said.
“Just because you’re finding something, you got a new technology … doesn’t mean that it wasn’t there when you weren’t looking for it,” he said.
Most people infected with polio are asymptomatic, but others can develop flu-like symptoms and in rare cases, more serious conditions such as paralysis or meningitis — an infection in the spinal cord or brain — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes.
Before a vaccine became available in the 1950s, polio disabled an average of 35,000 people per year.
While not a threat to Florida, this New York spread is a reminder that vaccination rates across the U.S. are going down and leaving the country vulnerable to once-eradicated diseases, Unnasch said.
Orange County’s kindergarten immunization levels have gone down every year since 2015, from 95% to 90% in 2021.
“People start to question ‘well, why should I bother to get vaccinated … because this isn’t around anymore?’ … But the trouble is that it’s still around, just at a low level,” he said.
ccatherman@orlandosentinel.com; @CECatherman Twitter
