No samples have been taken from people but, so it stays unclear if anybody within the Palestinian territory has been contaminated.
Oral polio vaccine (OPV) replicates within the intestine and may be handed to others via faecal-contaminated water – that means it will not damage the kid who has been vaccinated however may infect their unvaccinated neighbours in locations the place hygiene and immunisation ranges are low.
Ayadil Saparbekov, the WHO’s head of well being emergencies within the occupied Palestinian territories, stated Tuesday that genomic sequencing performed by the US Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta indicated that the samples had shut genetic linkage with one another and to samples present in Egypt in late 2023.
“We do think about that there’s a excessive danger of spreading of … (the) vaccine-derived poliovirus in Gaza,” he stated.
WHO and the UNICEF youngsters’s company will ship a joint crew to Gaza on Thursday to start accumulating human samples, with clear suggestions anticipated inside the coming days on the best way to tackle the risk, together with presumably a mass vaccination marketing campaign.
Israel’s navy in the meantime stated Sunday that it had began vaccinating its troops in Gaza in opposition to polio.