Polio Health International

COVID-19 Vaccine  

Information for Polio  

Survivors

As the COVID-19 vaccines are approved for use and

begin to be given to Americans and others, PHI has

begun receiving questions from our constituents.

Remember our knowledge about the COVID-19 virus

is only about one year old and is continually being

updated which means information and

recommendations sometime change from month to

month. Your primary care physician, especially one

that has worked with you for some time, is the best source of information of what will be  recommended for YOU and your particular situation.

At this time, December 2020, here is how our Medical Advisory Committee is responding to these  questions:

Does having had polio or having received the polio vaccine give immunity to COVID 19? There has been a “theory” circulating that recent expose to some viral diseases or vaccines to  those viral diseases might “boost” the immune system and provide some protection against  COVID-19 but that is not backed by any clinical evidence. (If a history of receiving the polio  vaccine did provide protection against COVID-19, then the older people living in the developed  world, most of whom have been immunized against polio, would have a very low incidence of  novel coronavirus infections, and that is clearly not the case!)

Will I be given priority because I had polio? No, a history of polio does not in itself make a  person more likely to get COVID-19 or get sicker than others of similar age and other medical  conditions. So, a history of polio and/or PPS does not move an individual up the priority list. On the other hand, most people who contracted polio in the United States or Canada are over age 65 and  several even over 80 years old. Therefore, they are already in the “high risk” group, which  generally places them in the second tier of people slated to be offered the vaccine. Polio survivors  with respiratory compromise may rise up one level over others of a similar age group due to their  underlying respiratory condition; likewise for the polio survivor living in a nursing home or other  senior living situation. In the US, each state, with input from the national health authorities,  determined their own priority list, so where you fall in the priority tier system may vary slightly from  state to state.

After I get the vaccine, even the first dose, can I stop with all these “precautions”? We  don’t know all the particulars, but studies have shown less than 50% immunity two weeks after the  first dose which rises to greater than 90% protection two weeks after the second dose. Our  colleagues in the British Polio Fellowship summarize the precautions as “Hands, Face, Space,”  and the recommendation is to continue these precautions until enough people have received the  vaccine to minimize the risk of exposure from the general public.

Why do I need two doses? Because tests to date with the vaccines that are currently available  have shown only partial protection after the first dose and a much better immune response after  the second. This is not unusual for vaccines—to get full immunity from polio a minimum of three  (3) doses are recommended and four (4) are usually given; the shingles vaccine is a series of two

shots as are the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and the chickenpox vaccine. As new

COVID-19 vaccines are developed and approved it is possible that, at some point, we will have a  single dose COVID-19 vaccine that is safe and effective, but not yet.

Can I get COVID-19 from the vaccine? No, the technology used to make the COVID-19 vaccine  does NOT use any live virus or even part of the virus particle. All the new vaccines were made by  breaking and then artificially duplicating part of the genetic code contained in the spikes on the  surface of the COVID-19 virus. They work by blocking the virus from attaching to your cells and  then invading your cells and causing infection.

When all the vaccines become available which one(s) should I get? THE FIRST ONE THAT  BECOMES AVAILABLE TO YOU, REGARDLESS OF WHETHER ONE OR TWO DOSES!

Who should not get the vaccine? For now, it has not been adequately tested in youngsters  under the age of 16 years or in pregnant women, so it is recommended that the vaccine not be  given to those individuals until studies show the vaccines to be safe and effective in these groups.

There have been a few cases of severe allergic reactions in people with multiple significant  allergies to other substances, so, for now, persons with allergies severe enough to carry an Epi Pen should discuss with their physician before being immunized.

-PHI Medical Advisory Committee

Taken from:

https://post-polio.org/covid-19-vaccine/

Information Surrounding Article from

Mayo Clinic Causes Frustration

A^{press release from Mayo Clinic (Rochester, Minnesota) this}

August was entitled “Survivors of childhood polio do well decades later as they age.” The release summarized the work published in the September 2006 Journal of the Peripheral Nervous System (Volume 11, Issue 3). “Electrophysiological findings in a co hort of old polio survivors” by Eric J. Sorenson, Jasper R. Daube and Anthony J. Windebank, reported on a randomly selected group of 50 polio survivors from the general population of Olmsted County, home of Mayo Clinic, they followed for 15 years. The average age  of participants at the study’s start was 53, and the patients were an average of 40 years past their childhood experience with polio.

Martin B. Wice, MD, Chair of PHI’s Medical Advisory Committee, reminds all  of us that the effect of a small loss of strength can dramatically affect some survivors’ ability to func tion. It has to do with the starting point. He explains, “If Warren Buffet loses 10% of his income, he

 

The technical conclusions from the abstract were that “overtime, the co hort demonstrated a modest decline in summated compound muscle action potential amplitudes (CMAP) and a moderate decline in the summated motor unit number estimates (MUNE). There was no association between symptoms of late deterioration and magnitude of decline. Rather, the presence of these symptoms was asso ciated with the magnitude of the residual deficits. Two patterns of neu ron loss were modeled (linear and proportional decline). The summated MUNE was a more sensitive measure of loss of motor units than was the summated CMAP and appears to be a more valid measure of attritional loss of anterior horn cells. Of these two models of neuron loss, the proportional loss of motor neurons was a better fit of the data than a linear loss.”

Headlines read, “No polio effects in later life” and “Problems attributed  to aging.” A Post-Polio Health reader

was “outraged that … post-polio syn drome was trivialized. My muscle wasting, weakness and tremor in my left hand and arm, in addition to atrophy in my right leg, is not part of the normal aging process.”

When questioned, Eric J. Sorenson, MD, responded, “Unfortunately, our work has been interpreted that the

post-polio syndrome doesn’t exist. The point is that the majority of sur vivors of childhood polio do well for many years. There is a small minority, and we saw this in our population as well, that may follow a more aggres sive course. Most polio survivors fol lowed a relatively stable path with time over 15 years.

“The issue with aging is difficult. We did not include a normal aging group with our cohort and so we cannot draw any firm conclusion in that regard. The magnitude of change we saw in the cohort appeared to be commensurate with what would be expected in normal aging, however, there was a wide range. Some changed very little; some changed more. This is good news for the majority. Our work is not intended to diminish the significant problems that do occur in some polio survivors, but rather reassure the many worried polio survivors that they are not nec essarily destined for progressively increasing disability as they age.” s

won’t notice, but if some one who earns $15,000 a year loses 10% of their

earnings, it will have a major impact on what they eat.”

Want to read more?

Go to www.post-polio.org/ipn/ mayo.html.

“Aging Brings New Challenges for Polio Survivors” by Mike Mitka in JAMA, October 11, 2006, Vol. 256, No. 14, www.jama.com.

 

www.post-polio.org POST-POLIO HEALTH B Fall 2006 B Vol. 22, No. 4 3