An outbreak of the Polio virus has been detected in UK sewage samples during routine collection from the Beckton Sewage Treatment Works, which serves around four million people in north and east London. And now it's emerged that thousands of children across England are not fully protected against polio.
Here in the South West of England, data shows that 10.3 per cent of children did not get their boosters (usually given at age 3 years and four months), with more than 23 per cent of teenagers in the region not having the later jab. Official figures show that overall, of the 693,928 children in England aged five in 2020/21, some 592,191 (85.3%) had received their polio booster by their fifth birthday while 101,737 (14.7%) had not.
Around a third of all these unprotected five-year-olds were in London (34,105). But the regional percentages of five-year-olds who had not received their booster ranged from 8.4% in north-east England to 27.4% in London.
