Open Outbreak

Should I be worried about Poliovirus (wild and vaccine-derived)?

Updated · Graded from official assessments; nothing here is medical advice.

Poliovirus (wild and vaccine-derived) · Attention: elevated

If you are in the affected area no assessment
No agency has published one worldwide risk level for people in all current polio-affected areas. Recent WHO notices range from moderate in Israel on 20 August 2025 to high in Papua New Guinea on 20 May 2025.
If you are elsewhere in the same country or region no assessment
No agency has published one worldwide assessment for being elsewhere in an affected country or region. Recent WHO notices range from moderate in Israel on 20 August 2025 to high in Papua New Guinea on 20 May 2025.
If you are travelling there soon high
WHO’s current polio topic page says the international spread of poliovirus remains under the long-running PHEIC, and this official item assesses the risk for travellers as high. WHO also states that WPV1 remains endemic in Pakistan and Afghanistan. According to WHO
If you are elsewhere in the world high
WHO’s current polio topic page says polio remains a global eradication emergency under the continuing PHEIC, and this official item assesses the risk elsewhere in the world as high. According to WHO

What is happening

Polio remains an ongoing global eradication emergency rather than a newly accelerating outbreak in this 14-day window, with WHO saying the international spread of poliovirus is still under the Public Health Emergency of International Concern declared in 2014 and extended again in 2025. In the official notices available here, WHO reports ongoing cVDPV1 transmission in Israel detected through environmental surveillance, with no paralytic cases reported there, and a cVDPV2 outbreak in Papua New Guinea after detections in healthy children and in the environment. WHO’s polio topic page also says wild poliovirus type 1 remains endemic in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The latest figures in these materials are official reports of no paralytic cases in Israel in the August 2025 notice, plus WHO’s note that 11 cVDPV1 cases were reported in 2024, ten in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and one in Mozambique, while the only fresh media signal is an unverified 3 October 2026 Gaza report carrying 0 confirmed cases in the ingested metadata. Officials are focusing on vaccination campaigns, acute flaccid paralysis and environmental surveillance, laboratory sequencing, active case finding, and catch-up work in under-immunized communities.

Who is affected and how it spreads

Polio can affect people of any age, but it is most likely to keep spreading where vaccination coverage is low or uneven. It spreads mainly through contact with infected stool, and sometimes through contaminated food or water, because the virus multiplies in the gut. Most infected people have no symptoms, which is why transmission can be hard to spot. In a small minority, the virus reaches the nervous system and causes weakness or paralysis that can be permanent; both wild poliovirus type 1 and circulating vaccine-derived polioviruses matter where immunity is patchy.

What we are watching

Updates

Sources