Polio

The last case of wild polio was contracted in 1984 and the UK has remained polio-free since 2003.

Why it matters: The discovery means it's likely there has been some spread of a "vaccine-derived" polio virus between close contacts in London, the agency said. What they're saying: "Vaccine-derived polio virus is rare and the risk to the public overall is extremely low," Vanessa Saliba, consultant epidemiologist at the health agency, said in a statement. - Polio virus samples will pop up after someone vaccinated with the oral polio vaccine shed traces of the "vaccine-like" polio virus in their excrement, the agency said. The concern: A "vaccine-derived" polio virus can cause serious illness, such as paralysis, in those who have not been fully vaccinated, the U.K. agency said. Driving the news: The health agency said it has found several "closely related viruses" to polio virus in sewage samples taken between February and May. The last case of wild polio in the U.K. was confirmed in 1984 and the country has remained polio-free since 2003.

Scientists in Britain have detected multiple versions of the virus in wastewater. Officials say the risk to the public is extremely low and urge people to ...

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Britain's polio-free status could be at risk for the first time in almost two decades after several samples of vaccine-derived poliovirus were found during ...

Health officials in Britain are warning parents to make sure their children have been vaccinated against polio.

The polio vaccine is given to young babies in the UK as part of a combination vaccine. The last case of natural polio infection acquired in the UK was in 1984. The UK Health Security Agency said it believes the virus was "vaccine-derived", meaning it came from someone who received the live polio vaccine abroad.

U.K. health authorities have said they are urgently investigating a rare polio virus outbreak in sewage samples in London.

"In populations with low vaccine uptake it is possible that the live polio vaccine can spread from one person to another. It is common practice in the U.K. for children to receive an inactivated polio vaccine as part of their routine vaccination program; with three shots given before the age of one and another shot given at ages three and 14. Polio is a rare virus that can occasionally cause serious illness, such as paralysis, in people who are not fully vaccinated. On occasion, it can attack muscles used for breathing, which can be fatal. Generally, those who do become infected with polio display no symptoms, though some can develop a flu-like illness up to three weeks later. A number of waste samples from the Beckton sewage treatment works in Newham, east London tested positive for vaccine-derived polio virus between February and May, the U.K. Health Security Agency said Wednesday.

News originally published on the Global Polio Eradication Initiative website. The Global Polio Laboratory Network (GPLN) has confirmed the isolation of type ...

It is important that all countries, in particular those with a high volume of travel and contact with polio-affected countries and areas, strengthen surveillance in order to rapidly detect any new virus importation and to facilitate a rapid response. Any form of poliovirus anywhere is a threat to children everywhere. It is important to note that the virus has been isolated from environmental samples only – no associated cases of paralysis have been detected.

"A successful transition of polio assets is essential to sustain a polio-free world, strengthen essential immunization and disease surveillance, and boost the ...

The mission focused on ensuring that essential functions are maintained in Iraq as it transitions out of Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) support. The polio transition process has been designed to build the capacity of the polio workforce to support broader health priorities, including improving essential immunization, disease surveillance and outbreak preparedness and response, in primary health care centres and beyond. The team paid a visit to the Central Public Health Laboratory, the Communicable Disease Control Department and the Integrated Surveillance Department. The team also visited one of Baghdad's primary health care centres to witness first-hand the performance of immunization and other essential health services.

Traces of type 2 vaccine-derived poliovirus were detected during routine surveillance of sewage in London.

The National Health Service will begin reaching out to parents of children aged under 5 in the capital who are not up to date with their vaccinations, the government said. “In this instance, the isolates identified between February and June 2022 are genetically related. The U.K. health security agency says it normally detects between one and three “poliovirus isolates per year” in sewage but they are normally one-offs and unrelated to each other. Surveillance, vaccination and investment to— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) #EndPolio🌍 is critical, as the #UK's announcement of environmental #poliosamples identified in London sewage reminds us. So far, the polio virus has only been detected in sewage samples but investigations are underway to establish if any community transmission is occurring. There is no cure, but vaccinations since the 1960s, mostly in childhood, have been a game changer allowing many countries to eradicate wild polio.

The vaccine-derived poliovirus -- which originates from live attenuated polio viruses contained in oral polio vaccines -- still trigger outbreaks, most recently ...

A. Polio clinical and laboratory surveillance · B. Polio vaccination check and offer · Background and interpretation · Polio immunisation coverage.

The UK is committed to global polio eradication and key to achieving this is maintaining high vaccine coverage (>= 95%) in the routine childhood immunisation programme. It is essential to maintain high uptake at the national, regional and local levels in order to reduce the risk of importations (including of vaccine-like poliovirus) leading to transmission in under-vaccinated communities and paralytic presentations occurring. While the UK stopped using OPV in 2004, several countries, including Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria have continued to use OPV containing type 2 virus for outbreak control. This has prompted the need to investigate the extent of transmission of this virus in Northeast London. UKHSA National Polio Guidelines outline public health actions for consideration when one or more vaccine-related poliovirus type 2 [Level 2 (C)] are detected in environmental samples. Vaccine-like type 2 poliovirus (PV2) isolates have been found in multiple sewage samples collected from the London Beckton Sewage Treatment Works between February and June 2022.

The UK used to use a highly effective oral polio vaccine that came as drops. It has switched to the newer, injectable form. The NHS offers five doses from the ...

However, this is the first time that a genetically-linked cluster has been found repeatedly over a period of months. But that means some is then excreted in poo. This causes paralysis - usually of the legs. A tiny number of samples of the polio virus are detected each year in the UK during sewage surveillance. The last person recorded to have acquired the wild virus in the UK was in 1984. UK health officials say they have detected the virus that causes polio in a concerning number of sewage samples in London.

Scientific American is the essential guide to the most awe-inspiring advances in science and technology, explaining how they change our understanding of the ...

So far, the virus has only been detected in sewage and no cases of paralysis have been reported. However, in some instances, the viruses have evolved to behave more like wild, naturally-occuring polioviruses that can cause illness in people who aren’t fully vaccinated. “Most of the U.K. population will be protected from vaccination in childhood, but in some communities with low vaccine coverage, individuals may remain at risk.” The UKHSA has launched an investigation to understand the scope of this spread and flag any suspected cases. The oral polio vaccine contains live, but weakened, polioviruses that can be shed in the stool of vaccinated people and thus end up in the sewers, according to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI). If they remain weak, these poop-bound polioviruses can actually boost the level of immunity in communities with poor sanitation, by spreading to unvaccinated people. A strain of poliovirus that can sometimes cause paralysis has cropped up in the sewers of London and may be spreading among closely-linked individuals in the north and east regions of the city, the U.K. Health Security Agency (UKHSA) warned Wednesday (June 22).

Poliovirus has been detected in London sewage samples, but no human cases have been reported so far.

The virus then replicates in the intestine, which can cause it to be excreted via faeces. “With the sewage samples, the genetic analysis indicates multiple chains of transmission, which suggests some people are spreading it among themselves,” she says. The major disadvantage of the oral vaccine is it can lead to vaccine-derived poliovirus in poorly-immunised populations. This strain could cause infection, but probably not severe disease, in people who have received the injected polio vaccine. These were previously one-off findings that occurred after a person received a live oral polio vaccine and shed the virus in their faeces. No cases of polio have been reported in the UK since 1984.

Discovery of virus at London wastewater plant sparks investigation and fears of outbreak.

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Experts' warning comes after data shows less than half 13 to 14-year-olds received booster in parts of England last year.

If you have a lot of virus circulating, the chances of it mutating is higher.” Official data shows that just 35% of 13 and 14-year-olds received polio boosters in Hillingdon, west London, which has the worst coverage in the country. He confirmed that public health experts believe the samples originated from someone vaccinated abroad. And in theory, it might be possible to find individual households or streets.” The agency typically picks up a handful of unrelated positive results for poliovirus each year, linked to people given the oral polio vaccine in other countries. Prof Paul Hunter, of the University of East Anglia, said: “Teenagers are not necessarily that well-protected against infection, particularly if they’ve not had the booster.

Health experts believe a combination of factors, including the type of vaccine used in other countries and a fall in vaccine coverage here, has contributed ...

The concern is that the virus may have emerged at the start of this year – several months ago. The IPV does not carry this risk, and it is close to 100 per cent effective against disease, but it does not stop transmission of the polio virus. Health experts believe that a combination of factors have caused this episode – but they do not know for sure.

The source of the virus is still a mystery, but was likely someone from outside of the United Kingdom who had recently received the oral polio vaccine (OPV), ...

Not only is it cheap and easy to administer, but also the live virus in the vaccine can still replicate in a recipient, triggering strong immune protection in the gut that can stop further transmission of the virus, helping boost community defenses against future outbreaks. The London polio detection is the second this year in a place that doesn’t usually have the virus. The genetic changes suggest the virus is continuing to evolve, a sign that it may be spreading in a small number of people. The spread is seeded either by the wild virus that persists in Afghanistan or Pakistan or by virus from OPV that has regained an ability to cause disease in unvaccinated people. This time, the virus continued to appear in London over several months, and several closely related versions of the virus turned up in recent samples. 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.

Scientists in Britain have detected multiple versions of the virus in wastewater. Officials say the risk to the public is extremely low and urge people to ...

Here in the U.S., polio immunization is part of the routine vaccination schedule for babies and children. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends they receive four doses of the inactivated polio vaccine. The U.K. was declared free of polio in 2003. Last year, the world recorded more than 600 cases of polio. And that's because of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic." So far, there have been no cases of polio detected directly in the U.K. But instead, scientists have discovered the outbreak through an indirect route. From 2019 to 2020, the number of polio cases worldwide almost tripled, NPR reported in April, resulting in more than a thousand known cases spread across nearly 30 countries. Polio causes permanent paralysis in people who are not fully vaccinated in about 5 out of every 1,000 cases. Scientists in England are quickly expanding surveillance of sewage samples to try and pinpoint where the outbreak occurred and whether it's still ongoing so they can stop it with targeted immunization. Polio spreads through the fecal-oral route. Transmission would require a concentration of people who had not yet been vaccinated." So the current hypothesis is that an infected person brought the virus into London and then spread it to others who weren't immunized.

A type of poliovirus derived from vaccines has been detected in London sewage samples, the World Health Organization and British health officials said ...

"This has prompted the need to investigate the extent of transmission of this virus in northeast London," UKHSA said. "The finding of vaccine-derived polio virus in sewage proves the point." "It is important to note that the virus has been isolated from environmental samples only," it said, stressing that "no associated cases of paralysis have been detected."

Just as we thought monkeypox would be the new virus scare for 2022, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) declared a national incident of repeated poliovirus ...

Results of the genomic sequencing analysis indicate that the current WPV1 isolate is genetically linked to a strain detected in Pakistan in 2019 and similar to ...

Countries, territories, and areas should also maintain uniformly high routine immunization coverage at the district level to minimize the consequences of any new virus introduction. WHO International Travel and Health recommends that all travellers to polio-affected areas should be fully vaccinated against polio. These symptoms usually last for 2–10 days and most recovery is complete in almost all cases. The virus is transmitted by person-to-person and spread mainly through the fecal-oral route or, less frequently, by a common vehicle (e.g., contaminated water or food) and multiplies in the intestine, from where it can invade the nervous system and cause paralysis. The virus is shed by infected people (usually children) through faeces, where it can spread quickly, especially in areas with poor hygiene and sanitation systems. The incubation period is usually 7–10 days but can range from 4–35 days.