ISLAMABAD: Pakistani health authorities have found poliovirus traces from environmental samples collected from the northwestern city of Peshawar, the National Emergency Operations Center (NEOC) for Polio Eradication said in a statement on Thursday, adding that the discovery has taken the number of positive environmental samples of the disease in the country to 15 this year.

The announcement was made a week after the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department, in collaboration with the NEOC, launched an anti-polio campaign across 17 districts of the province with the aim of immunizing 2.7 million children.