A young adult in New York has become the first US resident in nearly a decade to contract polio, state health officials say.

The unnamed patient in Rockland County is said no longer to be contagious, but has developed paralysis from the virus.

Officials say the person was unvaccinated, and was probably exposed to an individual who received a vaccine that contains the weakened live virus.

The last known US case of the highly contagious virus was recorded in 2013.

Once feared across the nation, the disease was largely eradicated by a national vaccination campaign that began in 1955.

Annual cases quickly fell from fewer than 100 in the 1960s to fewer than 10 in the 1970s - and the US was declared polio-free by 1979.