ISLAMABAD: The National Emergency Operations Centre (NEOC) has reported two more poliovirus cases in Pakistan, bringing the total number of cases this year to 52.

The National Reference Lab confirmed the cases, which were detected in Dera Ismail Khan’s Tehsil Darazinda, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The new cases include a three-year-old boy and a one-and-a-half-year-old girl, both of whom tested positive for Wild Poliovirus Type 1.

Sources revealed that the genetic analysis of the virus is currently underway.

So far this year,  24 polio cases were registered in Balochistan, 13 in Sindh,13 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and one each in Punjab and Islamabad.

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Earlier, Prime Minister (PM) Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif on Monday expressed the government’s resolve to make Pakistan a polio free country, stressing the need for unified action in this regard.

“We will not rest until we have permanently defeated polio”, he said while chairing a meeting on polio eradication here.