Surveillance To Track Progress Toward Poliomyelitis Eradication — Worldwide, 2021–2022

Abstract

Since the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) was established in 1988, the number of wild poliovirus (WPV) cases has declined by >99.9%, and WPV serotypes 2 and 3 have been declared eradicated (1). By the end of 2022, WPV type 1 (WPV1) transmission remained endemic only in Afghanistan and Pakistan (2,3). However, during 2021-2022, Malawi and Mozambique reported nine WPV1 cases that were genetically linked to Pakistan (4,5), and circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus (cVDPV) outbreaks were detected in 42 countries (6). cVDPVs are oral poliovirus vaccine-derived viruses that can emerge after prolonged circulation in populations with low immunity allowing reversion to neurovirulence and can cause paralysis. Polioviruses are detected primarily through surveillance for acute flaccid paralysis (AFP), and poliovirus is confirmed through stool specimen testing. Environmental surveillance, the systematic sampling of sewage and testing for the presence of poliovirus, supplements AFP surveillance. Both surveillance systems were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic's effects on public health activities during 2020 (7,8) but improved in 2021 (9). This report updates previous reports (7,9) to describe surveillance performance during 2021-2022 in 34 priority countries.* In 2022, a total of 26 (76.5%) priority countries met the two key AFP surveillance performance indicator targets nationally compared with 24 (70.6%) countries in 2021; however, substantial gaps remain in subnational areas. Environmental surveillance expanded to 725 sites in priority countries, a 31.1% increase from the 553 sites reported in 2021. High-quality surveillance is critical to rapidly detect poliovirus transmission and enable prompt poliovirus outbreak response to stop circulation. Frequent monitoring of surveillance guides improvements to achieve progress toward polio eradication.