US formally added to WHO’s checklist of poliovirus outbreak international locations

A Pakistani health worker administers polio vaccine drops to a child during a vaccination campaign in Karachi on December 10, 2018. Pakistan is one of only two countries in the world where polio remains endemic.

Enlarge / A Pakistani well being employee administers polio vaccine drops to a baby throughout a vaccination marketing campaign in Karachi on December 10, 2018. Pakistan is certainly one of solely two international locations on the planet the place polio stays endemic. (credit score: Getty | RIZWAN TABASSUM )

America, one of many world’s richest and most developed international locations, has met the World Well being group’s standards to be listed as a rustic with circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus, the US Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention introduced Tuesday.

The US now joins the ranks of round 30 different polio outbreak international locations, largely low- and middle-income, together with Ethiopia, Mozambique, Somalia, and Yemen. Notably, the checklist consists of simply two different high-income international locations—the UK and Israel—which have detected the circulation of a poliovirus pressure genetically linked to the one spreading within the US.

Particularly, the US met the factors for WHO’s checklist by documenting a affected person with vaccine-derived poliovirus and having at the very least one environmental pattern of vaccine-derived poliovirus. In July, well being officers in New York’s Rockland County reported a case of paralytic polio in an unvaccinated resident who had not just lately traveled. Since then, New York officers and the CDC surveilled the unfold of the virus in wastewater, discovering 57 optimistic samples from 4 New York counties and New York Metropolis. The dates of the optimistic samples span from April to a latest sampling in August.

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