The US National Authority for Containment of Poliovirus (NAC) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Center for Preparedness and Response has recently launched the National Inventory for Poliovirus Containment: Minimizing Risk of Poliovirus Release from Laboratories in the United States, as part of the WHO Global Action Plan (GAP III). In compliance with GAP III, the US is required to complete a national inventory of poliovirus-containing materials by surveying laboratories and other facilities. An initial survey was released in 2015 in order to identify facilities with infectious poliovirus materials and potentially infectious stool specimens. The survey responses were used to identify candidate Poliovirus-Essential Facilities for containment certification.

This new survey focuses on identifying facilities with potentially infectious materials (PIM). PIM includes human respiratory secretion and fecal specimens collected for non-polio related work in a time and place where at least one of the following is true:

  • wild poliovirus (WPV) was circulating
  • vaccine-derived poliovirus (cVDPV) was circulating
  • oral polio vaccine (OPV) was in use

Who should take this survey? Laboratories and other facilities that have materials collected in the United States before 2001 and/or outside of the U.S. The survey should be completed by laboratories, storage sites, or other facility types that test, extract, handle, or store biological samples from humans, experimentally infected animals, sewage, or environmental waters. The survey questions are intended to identify facilities that possess any materials that could potentially contain poliovirus.

The survey can be accessed on the US NAC’s website at https://www.cdc.gov/cpr/polioviruscontainment/NIPC.htm.  For additional information or questions, you can contact the NAC at 404.718.5160 or poliocontainment@cdc.gov.

NIPC Outreach Toolkit (MS WORD, 63KB)

To assist you in disseminating information to your members, we have provided an outreach toolkit which includes various templates for distribution through your organization’s internal and public communication channels: 1) example social media messages to copy and posts to your organization’s Facebook page and/or Twitter account, 2) template scripts to send out NIPC announcements in newsletters or email listserv, and 3) a link to an infographic to distribute through any of the aforementioned methods. These materials can be shared and used by your organization’s communication team to inform your members about the importance of poliovirus containment and to encourage them to take the NIPC, which is now live at https://www.cdc.gov/cpr/polioviruscontainment/NIPC.htm.