KATHMANDU, Nov 15: It has been confirmed that the poliovirus found in a sample of the sewage taken from the Tukucha rivulet in Kathmandu last July is not contagious.
Lily Shrestha, the Medical Chief at the National Public Health Laboratory stated on Friday that a test of the sample from the rivulet conducted in Bangkok, Thailand has confirmed that the virus detected is not poliovirus.
“We did not find the poliovirus in the tests carried out from time to time on whether the samples collected from the sewage of the Tukucha rivulet had spread or not,” she said, “If that virus had spread, it would have been detected in the sewage mixed in the rivulet. But we did not find the virus in the sewage which confirmed that it has not spread.”
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Poliovirus was found in a sample collected from the confluence of Bagmati and Tukucha rivulet near Tripureshwar of Kathmandu Metropolitan City-12 last July.
Chief of the Child Health and Immunization Section of the Department of Health Services Dr Abhiyan Gautam said that samples have been continuously collected and tested 13 times after the detection of the poliovirus in the sample collected from Tukucha rivulet, but it was not detected again.
The Section has been collecting samples and testing them for the presence of poliovirus since 2017. Dr Gautam added that samples are collected from the Bagmati, Dhobikhola, Manahara, Bishnumati rivers in Kathmandu and tested two times per month for the presence of poliovirus.
Similarly, samples are collected and tested for the presence of poliovirus once a month in Pokhara, Biratnagar and Janakpur.
Dr Gautam said that polio infection has not been found in the country since 2010.
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