Health chiefs cautioned that Polio may be circulating in the United Kingdom for the first time in almost 40 years.
Officials have discovered traces of a vaccine-derived version of the virus in sewage samples in parts of London and say it’s probably transmitting within the community.
Parents are being encouraged to ensure their children are up to date with their polio vaccinations, especially after the pandemic when school immunisation schemes were disrupted.
All British children are supposed to have had the first of three polio jabs as a baby, but uptake in London drags behind the remainder of the country.
Polio spreads through coughs and sneezes or contact with objects contaminated with faeces, causing permanent paralysis in around one in 100 cases. Children are at a higher risk.
According to the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), the virus was noticed various times between February and May and has persisted to mutate.
It’s believed that someone inoculated with the live polio vaccine, which uses a diluted version of the virus abroad, journeyed to the United Kingdom and divested part of the pathogen in their stool, but health officials insist the threat to the public overall is excessively low, with urgent investigations now underway to locate anyone who’s been contaminated.
The last time someone caught polio within the United Kingdom was in 1984 but there have been dozens of imported cases since then. Britain was declared polio-free in 2003.
It comes as London fights a bout of monkeypox, another rare viral disease that was until recently restricted to regions of western and central Africa.
The UKHSA said it discovered several closely affiliated polioviruses in specimens gathered from the London Beckton Sewage Treatment Works in Newham.
No cases have been confirmed yet but the UKHSA said it’s possible there’s been some spread between closely linked people in North and East London.
It’s normal for traces of the virus to be occasionally detected as part of routine testing of sewage, but the findings are generally a one-off.
These generally come from people who were vaccinated with the live oral vaccine overseas and then travelled to the United Kingdom. People given the oral vaccine can shed the weakened live virus used in the vaccine in their faeces for several weeks.
Most countries have changed to polio jabs that use inactivated pieces of the virus but some developing nations still depend on the live vaccine.
But what do the government expect with all the uncontrolled immigrants that are being allowed into our country? And it will get far worse by 2025, and there will be unprecedented competition for immigrant workers because there’s an increasing crisis in this country because immigrants will work for less money and more hours, whereas, British workers don’t want to work for less money and more hours.
This is the absolute opposite of what Brexit stands for, and it’s because it’s less appealing for skilled workers, but then Brexit was consistently a silly idea, and the timing couldn’t have been worse with de-globalisation, shortening of supply chains, worker shortages, excessive cost increases for transport, essentially every financial trend is the contrasting opposite of what Brexit stands for.
This is just another excuse to force vaccines onto people, especially when people’s immune systems are compromised right now since COVID jabs were introduced, but then the Tories don’t do experts and believe that the science is all wrong, but then those that are spreading pestilence to everyone are the ones that are evil.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 