New York has a polio case, a disease considered all but eradicated here. Here are 5 takeaways on what it means for your health.

For the first time in nine years, health officials this month reported a new U.S. case of polio, a paralysis-causing disease that has been all but eradicated in most of the world.

The infected person was unvaccinated and likely contracted the virus from someone who had received an oral polio vaccine in another country, the New York State Department of Health said last week.

That’s because the oral vaccine contains a weakened form of the virus, which, on rare occasions, can spread to unvaccinated people and cause polio. The United States stopped administering the oral vaccine in 2000 and instead uses a vaccine with inactivated virus.

Physicians say the threat to the general public is low from the new case, in Rockland County, N.Y. Still, anyone who has not been vaccinated remains potentially at risk of contracting the disease at any time.

Here are five takeaways on the new polio case in New York, with an assist from Daniel Taylor, an associate professor of pediatrics at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in Philadelphia:

According to the CDC, poliovirus is mostly spread through infected feces. For example, someone can catch poliovirus if they had bits of contaminated fecal matter on their hands and then touched their face. People with poliovirus are extremely contagious and can spread it to other people up to two weeks after symptoms first arise.

Since polio is considered all but vanquished in the United States, Taylor called it terrifying to know that there was an unvaccinated person who was exposed to poliovirus and now has paralysis.

This was avoidable. While polio can have devastating long-term health consequences, the vaccine is safe and readily available.

Health officials in New York echoed Taylor’s concerns, reminding people of the widespread fear that surrounded the disease before the creation of the vaccine.

There hasn’t been a case of polio that originated in the United States since 1979, largely because of far-reaching vaccination efforts. A Pennsylvania physician, Jonas Salk, played a role in this historic effort through research that eventually led to the first polio vaccine. It was funded by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, later renamed the March of Dimes.

Taylor said he does not have a single response when families are hesitant to vaccinate their children. He tries to offer guidance individualized to each family’s questions, and really listen to their concerns without judgment.

“The scare techniques of ‘If you don’t vaccinate your kid they’re gonna get this, that, the other thing’ doesn’t really work, in my opinion,” he said.

He also encourages parents to read the vaccine information on the CDC website and discuss any questions with their child’s physician.

Polio immunization is required for school, and according to the Pennsylvania Department of Health, 95.4% of the state’s kindergarten students had four or more doses of the polio vaccine in 2021.

Still, early in the COVID-19 pandemic, pediatricians worried that some families would skip or delay bringing in their children for routine vaccinations against diseases such as measles, mumps, and polio.

Those fears may be on target, according to a recent study in JAMA Pediatrics. Researchers compared how many children were up to date on vaccines in 2019 and 2020, finding that the 2020 levels were lower after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nonetheless, polio vaccination rates remain well above 90%. In the United States, 92.6% of children have received the recommended three doses of the polio vaccine by 2 years of age.

If a vaccine was missed, Taylor recommends that parents call their health-care provider.

He noted that many practices offer extended and weekend hours to help families catch up on children’s care. “We’ll do what’s called nurse visits only, which is just coming in [to] get vaccines and we’ll schedule a longer well-visit appointment later on,” he said.