Wastewater-based poliovirus surveillance in EU/EEA

EU-WISH (EU-Wastewater Integrated Surveillance for Public Health) is a Joint Action under the EU4Health programme, which supports the policy priority of strengthening the European Union's capacity to prevent, prepare for and rapidly respond to serious cross-border health threats.  In the summer of 2024, one of the actions of this Joint Action, EU-WISH T5.1 Mapping Survey, was conducted to map wastewater surveillance activities at a European level. As part of this survey, the status of wastewater surveillance for poliovirus in each participating country was mapped.

On 28 November 2024, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the detection of poliovirus through routine wastewater surveillance in three countries within the WHO European Region (Germany, Poland and Spain) since September 2024. In response to the related discussions across countries and with stakeholders, EU-WISH compiled this news item with key results from the survey.

In the survey, most country representatives (67%, 18 out of 27 countries) responded that in 2024 a centralized national wastewater-based surveillance programme for poliovirus and non-polio enteroviruses was in place. Of these, 15 countries (83%) are supporting the WHO global polio eradication initiative GPEI programme, which is the main reason to undertake wastewater monitoring for poliovirus in most of these countries. Nine countries indicated to have a wastewater-based surveillance system for poliovirus since 2010 or before whereas seven countries have started surveillance for poliovirus in 2022 or later.

The reported wastewater sampling frequency varied with countries monitoring poliovirus on a weekly, monthly, quarterly basis or ad-hoc depending on specific needs. The number of wastewater samples that were processed to monitor poliovirus ranged from 1 to 250 per month, with samples taken from up to 37 wastewater treatments plants, representing 0.3 to 6.8 million persons per country. In total, eleven countries reported that adaptable or flexible strategies are in place to respond to detection of poliovirus in wastewater or to a poliovirus emergency. Two of these do not have an active wastewater surveillance system for poliovirus.

The survey was conducted within the context of EU-WISH task 5.1 (Mapping wastewater surveillance activity), with valuable support of many EU-WISH participants and key stakeholders from each participating country. EU-WISH will continue analysing the data of the System Mapping Survey to improve the understanding of the wastewater surveillance activities in the coming months.

Further information

• First insight into current wastewater surveillance activities in Europe
• WHO news about poliovirus detections in European Region
• ECDC news about wastewater poliovirus detections in the EU

Contact

EU-WISH coordinators:

• Pikka Jokelainen (pijo@ssi.dk)
• Steen Ethelberg (set@ssi.dk)

EU-WISH WP5:

• Jose Antonio Baz Lomba (JoseAntonio.BazLomba@fhi.no) 
• Marie Lesenfants (marie.lesenfants@sciensano.be)
• Tarja Pitkänen (tarja.pitkanen@thl.fi)