The World Health Organization (WHO) announced a second outbreak of “vaccine-derived” poliovirus Thursday.
Officials in Indonesia reported at least four cases of vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 (cVDPV2) between October 2022 and February 2023, according to WHO. In December 2023, the Indonesia Ministry of Health informed WHO of two additional cases in the Klaten District of Central Java and one in the neighboring district of Pamekasan.
The patients are a 6-year-old female and a one-year-old male. The male presented with an onset of paralysis in November 2023 and had a history of bivalent oral polio vaccine. The young girl developed acute flaccid paralysis, despite having two doses of the vaccine.
When it comes to not vaccinating, many people of an older generation who remember iron lungs will say but what about polio!?!? Fact is, much of the polio that is occurring in today’s world is vaccine-derived polio; meaning the polio vaccine is the actual cause of polio. pic.twitter.com/qdn6xS3dIk
— Dr. Shannon Kroner (@drshannonkroner) May 15, 2023
Polio is a highly-infectious disease that typically ails children under the age of 5, causing permanent paralysis in around 1 in 200 cases. Roughly 2 to 10% of those who contract polio and develop paralysis are killed by the disease. (RELATED: Polio Is Circulating Through New York’s Sewage System, Infecting The Unvaccinated)
“In very rare instances, the vaccine-derived virus can genetically change into a form that can cause paralysis as does the wild poliovirus – this is what is known as a vaccine-derived poliovirus (VDPV),” WHO noted in the alert. “The detection of VDPV in at least two different sources and at least two months apart, that are genetically linked, showing evidence of transmission in the community, is classified as ‘circulating’ vaccine-derived poliovirus (cVDPV).”
Indonesia is the second nation to deal with a vaccine-derived poliovirus outbreak in the last 12 months. The Ministry for Health in Tanzania announced their own outbreak in July 2023 of a mutated strain of polio from a man-made vaccine, which has now popped up an ocean and continent away in the Indonesian archipelago.