“The main thing countries can do … is to ensure strong disease surveillance and high vaccination coverage, to minimize the risk and consequences of re-emergence.'
Yesterday, declaring a “national incident” after poliovirus was detected in London sewage, public health officials in the United Kingdom asked physicians to be on alert for polio cases and urged residents to check whether they are up to date with their vaccinations for the now-rare disease.
In the United Kingdom, the virus was detected in samples taken between February and June from the Beckton Sewage Treatment Works, which processes wastewater from 4 million people in northern and eastern London. It did not initially raise alarm; sewage-monitoring programs in the U.K. usually detect a few such samples each year, shed by recent arrivals who have received OPV.
The London polio detection is the second this year in a place that doesn’t usually have the virus. On 7 March, an unvaccinated 3-year-old in Israel who had developed paralysis was diagnosed with polio, and the country has detected poliovirus in 25 sewage samples so far this year, mostly in or near Jerusalem. The virus there is also a vaccine-derived strain, but it is the type 3 strain, unrelated to the type 2 virus detected in London.
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