Pará finds polio virus in 3-year-old boy’s feces

The Secretary of Health of the State of Pará said this Thursday (6) to have found the virus that causes poliomyelitis in the feces of a three-year-old boy in the municipality of Santo Antônio do Tauá. The case is treated as suspicious.

“The type of virus detected in the exam is one of the components of the vaccine, and it is not the wild polio virus, which has been eradicated in the country since 1994,” the ministry said in a statement.

The Health Ministry said it would send a team to the state to follow up on the investigation. The folder suspects that the case is related to an error in the child’s vaccination.

The national CIEVS (Center for Strategic Information on Health Surveillance) must issue an updated risk statement on the subject.

According to members of the ministry, there is no circulation of the virus in Brazil and the case stems from a probable erroneous application of the vaccine. They say they are still afraid that the repercussion will get in the way of the immunization campaign against the disease.

According to a technical note from the Center for Strategic Information on Health Surveillance, from the government of Pará, the poliovirus was isolated in the child’s feces. The case had been previously reported as acute flaccid paralysis (AFP).

The boy presented symptoms on August 21, 2022, with fever, muscle pain, myalgia, impairment and motor reduction in the lower limbs, 24 hours after receiving the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) and OPV (oral vaccine against to polio).

According to the note, on September 12, 2022, the person responsible for the child attended the Basic Health Unit of the municipality, where she reported that on August 21, the day after vaccination, the boy had pain in the right lower limb and started to limp. As of September 10, he lost strength in his lower limbs, unable to stand.

The municipal Epidemiological Surveillance stated that, upon becoming aware, it carried out a home visit and requested a poliovirus investigation in the child’s feces.

It also states that the boy’s vaccination schedule was incomplete. She had not received doses of VIP (inactivated polio vaccine) previously, and also had only two doses of OPV, which is not in accordance with the norms of the PNI (National Immunization Program).

Feces were collected on September 16 and sent to the Reference Laboratory of Instituto Evandro Chagas. The positive result came out for Sabin Like 3 (polio virus) came out on the last day 4.

A team from the state’s epidemiological surveillance is in the municipality to collect and qualify the information, in addition to evaluating the child’s clinical condition.

According to the note from the health department, other diagnostic hypotheses were not ruled out, such as Guillain-Barré syndrome. “Therefore, the case remains under investigation according to what is recommended in the Epidemiological Surveillance Guide of the Ministry of Health.”

The doctor Renato Kfouri, president of the Immunization Department of the Brazilian Society of Pediatrics (SBP), explains that as the child had just received the Sabin vaccine, it is normal to find the virus in the feces.

“It does not mean that it is the cause of paralysis. It is necessary to sequence this virus to see if it is intact, attenuated in the vaccine, or if it has undergone some reversion of its virulence and is the cause of acute paralysis in children.”

Therefore, he says that a better investigation is needed, including neurological, and a genetic sequencing of the virus found in the feces, to know if the condition is related to the vaccine virus or if the child developed a paralysis due to another disease and it was just a coincidence. have just had the vaccine.

“She had an inadequate vaccination schedule, she had only received the oral vaccines, not the inactivated vaccine. [contra a pólio], as recommended by the Ministry of Health. It’s still a suspected case, it’s not a proven case of paralysis by the vaccine virus.”