Franklin Pierce
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For the first time in nearly 40 years, health officials in the U.K. have identified a likely outbreak of polio in London.
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. They've found multiple versions of the virus in sewage water, the U.K. Health Security Agency said Wednesday in a press release.
The risk to the general public is extremely low, the agency said, because the vast majority of people in Britain are vaccinated against polio during childhood – and therefore protected against infection.
But the agency encourages anyone not fully immunized to schedule an appointment right away.
People infected with polio, or who have been vaccinated with a live version of the virus, shed traces of the virus in their stool – which eventually end up in sewage wastewater. So the current hypothesis is that an infected person brought the virus into London and then spread it to others who weren't immunized.
"It sounds like the outbreak is very small," says virologist Angela Rasmussen, who studies polio at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. "The outbreak could be within an extended family. Transmission would require a concentration of people who had not yet been vaccinated."
The last case of polio in the U.K. occurred in 1984. The U.K. was declared free of polio in 2003.
The pandemic has given polio the opportunity to come surging back in many countries, Rasmussen says, because it disrupted childhood vaccination programs around the world.
Polio is found in the U.K. for the first time in nearly 40 years. Here's what it means
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. They've found multiple versions of the virus in sewage water, the U.K. Health Security Agency said Wednesday in a press release.
The risk to the general public is extremely low, the agency said, because the vast majority of people in Britain are vaccinated against polio during childhood – and therefore protected against infection.
But the agency encourages anyone not fully immunized to schedule an appointment right away.
People infected with polio, or who have been vaccinated with a live version of the virus, shed traces of the virus in their stool – which eventually end up in sewage wastewater. So the current hypothesis is that an infected person brought the virus into London and then spread it to others who weren't immunized.
"It sounds like the outbreak is very small," says virologist Angela Rasmussen, who studies polio at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. "The outbreak could be within an extended family. Transmission would require a concentration of people who had not yet been vaccinated."
The last case of polio in the U.K. occurred in 1984. The U.K. was declared free of polio in 2003.
The pandemic has given polio the opportunity to come surging back in many countries, Rasmussen says, because it disrupted childhood vaccination programs around the world.
Polio is found in the U.K. for the first time in nearly 40 years. Here's what it means
