PESHAWAR, Pakistan: After decades of work, polio had been wiped out almost all over the world. Only pockets remained in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Medical experts hoped that 2020 would be the last year in which the main form of the virus, which can permanently paralyze or cause death, posed a threat.
The coronavirus pandemic slowed this progress.
In March, home-based vaccination teams working across Pakistan were forced to stop their work because of Covid-19. As a result, poliomyelitis resurfaced, including a mutated form of the virus. It has now been detected in sewerage samples taken in 74% of Pakistan by the end of 2020, with only 13% in early 2018.
“Now the virus is not only in certain pockets. The risk is everywhere, ”said Rana Safdar, the doctor in charge of Pakistan’s polio campaign.
The decades-long battle to eradicate polio worldwide is one of the most ambitious and costly public health campaigns in history. The momentum of mass vaccination and its progress towards stopping a disease that has disabled or killed millions of people points to possible success in efforts to inoculate people around the world against Covid-19.