Poliovirus starts spreading in Karachi’s downtown areas

ISLAMABAD: Poliovirus is now spreading rapidly in Karachi, where a child was crippled by the Wild Poliovirus 1 a few days back after environmental sample of Rashid Minhas Road site in Karachi was tested positive for the polio, officials said on Thursday.

“The Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio Eradication at the National Institute of Health Islamabad has confirmed the detection of Type-1 Wild Poliovirus (WPV1) in an environmental (sewage) sample collected from district East, Karachi in October 2023.

“The environmental sample (Grab) was collected on October 10, 2023 from the ‘Rashid Minhas Road’ environmental sample collection site,” an official of the polio eradication initiative told ‘The News’ on Thursday.

This is the 6th positive sample from district East, Karachi and the 12th positive sample from Karachi Division at large this year, the official said, adding that one human polio case has also been reported from district East, Karachi in the current year.

“The isolated virus is classified as YB3A cluster and 99.7 percent genetically linked to the virus detected in an environmental sample in Sohrab Goth Karachi on September 12, 2023. The November SNID Polio campaign in the district is currently in progress from October 30 to November 5,” the official added.

This new detection takes the total number of positive environmental (sewage) samples in Pakistan in 2023 to 55. Meanwhile, the number of human polio cases in Pakistan in 2023 remains four.