Environmental Surveillance Results — June 2026

Pakistan's environmental surveillance results for June 2026 report wild poliovirus type 1 detections across the national sewage sampling network.

The year these results sit in

By September 2026 Pakistan had confirmed four wild poliovirus cases for the year — the first from Sujawal district in Sindh, and three from the Bannu division in southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. That is a marked improvement on 31 cases in 2025 and 74 in 2024.

Environmental surveillance is what prevents that improvement from being over-read. Case counts falling while sewage samples continue to test positive means the virus is still circulating and population immunity is currently high enough to suppress visible paralysis — a good position, but not interruption.

Why June

June marks the start of the high transmission season. Results from this point in the year are the clearest signal of what the second half will bring: the geographic spread of positives in June generally predicts where cases will appear later.

The concentration of 2026's cases in the Bannu division is consistent with the pattern the programme has reported repeatedly — security-related access constraints in southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa leaving children unvaccinated across consecutive rounds.

How the network works

Samples are collected from well over a hundred fixed sites nationwide, covering the catchments where poliovirus is most likely to circulate, and tested at the WHO-accredited Regional Reference Laboratory at the National Institute of Health in Islamabad. Genetic sequencing of each isolate establishes how it relates to virus found elsewhere in Pakistan and in Afghanistan.

What the results trigger

Targeted vaccination in the catchment of each positive site, intensified local paralysis surveillance, increased sampling frequency, and where sequencing shows linked strains, a response extending across the connected districts rather than the single site.

The international dimension

At its forty-fifth meeting in August 2026, the WHO Polio IHR Emergency Committee again found that the international spread of poliovirus remains a Public Health Emergency of International Concern and kept Pakistan under the temporary recommendations for infected states. Environmental surveillance data is a key input to that assessment — and it is why travellers leaving Pakistan still need a polio vaccination certificate.

For families

If your district appears in a positive result, the virus is in your community regardless of whether any child has been paralysed. Vaccinate every child under five in the next round. Call 1166 if no team arrives.

Related: how surveillance works · district-wise cases