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<\/p>\nPoliovirus has been detected in a sample of Perth’s wastewater, health officials have revealed.<\/p>\n
Authorities said the detection in mid-April was evidence of a vaccine-derived poliovirus Type 2 strain, similar to what has been identified in countries such as Africa, Europe and Papua New Guinea in recent years.<\/p>\n
Western Australia’s chief health officer, Dr Clare Huppatz, said while it was extremely unusual, it presented a very low risk to the population.<\/p>\n
“While this is a significant finding, this detection does not provide evidence of spread of the disease in WA,” she said.<\/p>\n
“The potential for this strain to circulate in a highly vaccinated population is very low, and the poliovirus vaccination coverage in WA children is 92 per cent.”<\/p>\n
Dr Huppatz noted the presence of the virus in wastewater in Europe during 2024 and 2025 did not lead to anyone developing the disease.<\/p>\n
What is vaccine-derived poliovirus?<\/p>\n
The vaccine for poliovirus effectively interrupts person-to-person spread.<\/p>\n
But on rare occasions in under-immunised populations, the live weakened virus contained in the vaccine can mutate and circulate, according to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.<\/p>\n
That results in vaccine-derived poliovirus, as suspected in this case.<\/p>\n
Australia uses inactivated polio vaccines which do not contain live virus and are given by injection.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis finding is most likely from someone who has travelled overseas and is shedding this virus strain,” she said.<\/p>\n
But she said the case served as a reminder for people to be fully vaccinated against the disease while it still circulated overseas.<\/p>\n
“The best thing they can do is check that they’re vaccinated \u2026 I wouldn’t expect to see this be a risk to the community, it’s just something that we really do need to monitor,” Dr Huppatz said.<\/p>\n
University of New South Wales medical epidemiologist Dr Abrar Chughtai said there had been similar detections in Australia recently.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAustralia previously detected vaccine-derived poliovirus in Melbourne wastewater in 2024, linked to an unvaccinated traveller,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Similar detections have occurred globally in many countries … mainly in under-immunised populations, with no subsequent outbreaks.”<\/p>\n
Testing increased\u200b<\/p>\n
The WA Department of Health said it was now increasing the frequency of wastewater poliovirus testing in the Perth metropolitan area.<\/p>\n
Dr Huppatz said the virus was detected in the Subiaco wastewater treatment plant which covers Subiaco and the Perth CBD, an area of about 250,000 people.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Dr Clare Huppatz says wastewater testing for poliovirus will be done weekly in the near future. (ABC News: Hugh Sando)<\/p>\n
She said people “can actually excrete the virus for quite some time”.<\/p>\n
“We will continue to test the wastewater in the Subiaco treatment plant but also in the adjacent ones, which cover a lot of the population of Perth,” she said.<\/p>\n
“We’ll test weekly for the next few months to test what the signal shows.<\/p>\n
“We will also alert any clinicians to look for any clinical cases, as part of our surveillance.”<\/p>\n
History of polio in Australia<\/p>\n
According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), Australia was declared polio-free in 2000.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
A chart has shown a sharp decline in polio cases since 1956, when the vaccine was introduced in Australia.\u00a0 (Supplied: Australia Institute of Health and Welfare)<\/p>\n
“Although there has been no known local transmission of the poliovirus in Australia since 1972, there remains a risk of the importation of polio from overseas,” its website reads.<\/p>\n
Since 1987, the only case of polio detected in Australia was in 2007 when an overseas-born student acquired the disease during a visit to a country with known ongoing polio transmission, according to the AIHW.<\/p>\n
The previous two epidemics of polio in Australia were in 1956, and from 1960 to 1962.<\/p>\n
Cases of polio sharply declined after 1956, when the vaccine was introduced.<\/p>\n
Polio, also known as poliomyelitis, is a highly contagious viral infection caused by the poliovirus.<\/p>\n
Polio spreads through contact with infected faeces, leading to gastrointestinal infection.<\/p>\n
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), polio can spread through contaminated water or food, and largely affects children under 5 years of age \u2014 although anyone of any age who is unvaccinated can contract the disease.<\/p>\n
‘Wild’ poliovirus cases have decreased by over 99 per cent since 1988, the WHO said, but the virus is still endemic in two countries \u2014 Pakistan and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Poliovirus has been detected in a sample of Perth’s wastewater, health officials have revealed. Authorities said the detection…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":642079,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,86,49650,310940,310942,310939,310941,310945,310943,41,39,42,40,310944,148,45,310937,310938,3853],"class_list":{"0":"post-642078","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-perth-news","11":"tag-polio","12":"tag-polio-disease","13":"tag-polio-impfung","14":"tag-polio-vaccine","15":"tag-polio-virus","16":"tag-poliomyelitis","17":"tag-poliovirus","18":"tag-top-news","19":"tag-top-stories","20":"tag-topnews","21":"tag-topstories","22":"tag-wa-department-of-health","23":"tag-wa-health","24":"tag-wa-news","25":"tag-what-is-polio","26":"tag-where-is-polio","27":"tag-who"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=642078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/642079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=642078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=642078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=642078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}