FRANKFURT: German authorities on Thursday identified the northern city of Hamburg as the location where a sewage sample containing the wild form of the poliovirus had been found, saying a task force had been established and more samples would be taken.

The nation’s main public health body, Robert Koch Institute, or RKI, told Reuters on Wednesday that a wastewater test at an unspecified German location was positive for the wild poliovirus, in a setback for efforts to rid the world of the deadly disease.

“The detection of wild poliovirus in a wastewater sample shows that surveillance is working. No clinical cases of polio have been reported to the RKI to date,” the German health ministry said on Thursday. The findings came more than 30 years after the last cases of wild poliovirus infections in people were registered in Germany and marked the first wild virus detection from environmental sampling in the country since this type of routine monitoring began in 2021, and the first in Europe since 2010, according to the World Health Organisation.

More samples being taken

Health authorities in the city of Hamburg, which is also one of Germany’s 16 regional states, said in a statement that they had convened an expert task force on infection control and would take more samples while coordinating closely with RKI. The health ministry said it was being kept informed of developments and emphasised that vaccination was key to protect against polio.

Hamburg added that the positive sample was taken in the week of October 6, reaffirming earlier RKI remarks that the risk to the general public was very low because of high vaccination rates and that no infections had been reported.

“The current detection suggests that the viruses were excreted by at least one person who was in Hamburg at the time the wastewater samples were taken,” added RKI on Thursday, adding that the event was unusual, but not totally unexpected.

Polio, short for poliomyelitis, is a viral infection that can kill or cause paralysis but which can be prevented by vaccination. There are two forms of polio circulating globally. Wild polio is rarer and now only found in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Beate Kampmann, scientific director at the Centre for Global Health at Germany’s largest university hospital, Charit in Berlin, said the finding underscored the importance of vaccination.

Polio anywhere means a potential risk of polio everywhere,” she told Reuters, adding that sustained funding for polio eradication was vital.

Published in Dawn, November 14th, 2025