The thirty-first meeting of the Emergency Committee under the International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR) on the international spread of poliovirus was convened by the WHO Director-General on 28 February 2022 with committee members and advisers attending via video conference, supported by the WHO Secretariat. The Emergency Committee reviewed the data on wild poliovirus (WPV1) and circulating vaccine derived polioviruses (cVDPV). Technical updates were received about the situation in the following State Parties: Afghanistan, Djibouti, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo), Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.

Wild poliovirus

The committee was encouraged that WPV1 transmission has fallen to very low levels, with no new case in Pakistan since January 2021 and only four in Afghanistan in 2021 and one in 2022. Environmental surveillance continues to detect low levels of WPV1 transmission in Pakistan with 7.6% of samples testing positive in 2021 compared to 56% in 2020. In the second half of 2021 the proportion was only 1.5%. So far in 2022 there has been no positive sample; the most recent positive sample was collected 3 December 2021 in southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP).