Routine public health surveillance has detected two distinct strains of polio virus in Cape Town’s wastewater.
Routine public health surveillance has detected two distinct strains of polio virus in Cape Town’s wastewater, prompting an increase in monitoring but no cause for public alarm.
The National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) informed the Department of Health after identifying the VDPV3 and nOPV2-L strains during proactive, population-wide disease tracking at a local wastewater treatment plant.
Crucially, health officials have classified the detections as "vaccine events", confirming that no clinical cases of the virus have been detected in humans.
The positive samples were caught early thanks to the NICD’s routine environmental testing, which analyses municipal sewage and water resources to catch emerging outbreaks and viral variants before they manifest as physical symptoms in the community.
