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Dr. Harry Hull, the state epidemiologist, said the cases do not pose a threat to the public because most people have been vaccinated against polio and are unlikely to have contact with Amish people. But he said he expects to find more infections within the Amish community because some of its members refuse immunizations on religious grounds.
None of the children has shown symptoms of the paralyzing disease. About 1 in 200 people who contract the polio virus suffer paralysis because of it; others typically rid themselves of the virus after weeks or months.
None of the four children had been vaccinated. Three are siblings; the fourth is a baby from another family. The infection came to light when the baby was hospitalized for various health problems and underwent tests. Authorities then began testing other members of the community for the virus.
Officials would not identify the Amish community but said it consisted of 100 to 200 people. Hull said the infections were traced to an oral vaccine that was administered in another country, probably within the last three years. The use of oral polio vaccine containing the live virus was stopped in this country in 2000. The live-virus vaccine caused an average of eight cases of polio a year in the U.S, where an injected vaccine made from the killed virus now is used.
State and federal officials are investigating how an infection from a vaccine given in another country reached Minnesota.
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