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Polio this week

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Indonesia announces closure of outbreak

Indonesia has officially ended its outbreak of poliovirus type 2, which arose from years of low polio immunization coverage. Nearly 60 million additional doses of polio vaccine were administered to children during the response.  More. 

“Eradicating polio is like wrestling with a gorilla.  Even when you have it down, you cannot let go.”

At a special event in Karachi, Pakistan, last week, global and national experts concurred that ending polio in Pakistan, and the world, is within reach.  “Eradicating polio is like wrestling with a gorilla. Even when you have the gorilla down you cannot let go. Now we have so few polio cases, but if we let go it is again going to become a problem that is going to haunt us forever,” said Chris Maher, senior specialist in polio eradication and former chief scientist of the global polio programme at WHO.  “Surveillance systems in Pakistan are orders of magnitude above the sensitivity of anything we had in the early part of eradication. For the first eight years that I was working on polio, we did not know what it was. We didn’t have genetic sequencing. The sophistication of what exists now is remarkable, and it also affects our perception of what is going on, because, in the past, we did not have these tools. So, we were not finding as much virus as we are now.”  More.

Puppets help win hearts for polio vaccination in Quetta, Pakistan

Balochistan Emergency Operations Center’s creative World Polio Day campaign reaches children in high-risk areas.  More. 

Three facilities holding poliovirus achieve full containment certification

As of November 2025, three facilities – in Belgium, Denmark, and the Republic of Korea – have reached the highest level of biorisk management certification for handling polioviruses. These are the first globally to earn a Certificate of Containment (CC) under WHO’s rigorous standards, ensuring that poliovirus materials are stored and managed with the utmost care.  More.

Summary of new polioviruses this week: 

  • Pakistan:  three WPV1-positive environmental samples
  • Angola:  two cVDPV2 cases
  • Namibia:  one cVDPV2-positive environmental sample
Country updates as of 19 November 2025

More information on the countries that have reported cases and/or environmental samples this week.

  • No WPV1 case was reported this week.  The total number of cases this year is 30.  The number of cases for 2024 remains 74.
  • Three WPV1-positive environmental samples were reported this week, from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh and Gilgit-Baltistan, collected in October.

  • Two cVDPV2 cases were reported this week, from Huila and Cuando Cubango, with onsets of paralysis on 10 June and 4 September. There have been 16 cases reported in 2025. The number of cases for 2024 remains nine.
  • No cVDPV2-positive environmental sample was reported this week.

  • One cVDPV2-positive environmental sample was reported this week, from Kavango, collected on 14 October.