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German health authorities have detected traces of the poliovirus in Hamburg’s wastewater, prompting calls to step up epidemiological surveillance and vaccination efforts.
Germany has reported no proven cases of poliomyelitis, or polio, a highly contagious disease that mainly affects young children and can affect the nervous system, sometimes causing paralysis.
The poliovirus detected in wastewater in Germany is genetically similar to a strain last identified in August in Afghanistan, one of only two countries where polio remains endemic.
This detection in Germany is “unusual, but not unexpected”, according to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).
The last known local case of polio in Germany was in 1990, and Europe was declared polio-free in 2002. However, authorities warn that cases can still be imported into Europe and spread among unvaccinated people.
This recent detection “underlines that until polio is eradicated everywhere, all countries remain at risk of virus importation and reinfection,” according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Poliovirus can be found in wastewater when people excrete the virus in their stool. This does not necessarily mean they are sick; it may also be linked to immunization with the oral polio vaccine, which contains a live attenuated virus.
Last year, after the detection of poliovirus in wastewater from Germany, Poland and Spainauthorities have called on countries to step up surveillance and vaccination to ensure their populations are well protected against polio.
In the European Union, vaccination rates for one-year-olds last year ranged from 79% in Romania to 99% in Hungary and Luxembourg, according to WHO data.
Public health experts have warned of possible loopholes at the local level that could allow the virus to spread unchecked.
Despite everything, the ECDC considers that the overall risk for Europeans linked to the poliovirus detected in Germany is “very low”.
