NSW to test wastewater for polio ‘as soon as possible’

NSW Health said it was working with Sydney Water to roll out testing “as soon as possible”.“NSW Health convened an expert panel last week, which included experts from Victoria, to consider the value and parameters of wastewater surveillance to help detect other infectious diseases, including poliomyelitis, caused by the poliovirus,” a spokesperson said.

The circulating virus is “vaccine-derived poliovirus” , which develops when the live, weakened virus used in the oral vaccine circulates through a community with low vaccination rates. Over time, and in very rare instances, the weakened virus mutates into a disease-causing virus. Vaccine-derived poliovirus is circulating in 27 African countries, along with Yemen, the US, the UK, Israel and Ukraine.

NSW first tested for poliovirus in wastewater at Byron Bay, Armidale and Newcastle between 2010 and 2012. Two wastewater plants in Melbourne have been screened regularly since 2014.

angus_dalton We could put permanent biosensors at sewerage points at street/suburb level and get advance warning of these pathogens

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'Tip of the iceberg': how polio is making a comeback - ABCIt was largely eradicated almost 50 years ago, but the crippling disease polio is making a comeback. The polio virus has been discovered in London, Jerusalem and New York state, where officials have declared a health emergency. Today, the health commissioner from the US county where there are already hundreds of cases on what needs to be done to stop the worldwide spread. Featured: Dr Patricia Schnabel Ruppert, epidemiologist and health commissioner, Rockland County, New York Keep them in fear. Polio is now almost totally derived from vaccines. Please stop pretending otherwise. Polio was controlled by better sewage and water infrastructure and less toxic pollution, not polio vaccines - which have always been quite useless and rather dangerous.
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