NEW YORK: As scientists around the world rush to find a vaccine to stem the spread of Covid-19, another deadly disease, polio, has become the latest target of misinformation campaigns online. The World Health Organization (WHO) celebrated the announcement on August 25 that Africa had eradicated the wild poliovirus — a landmark in a decades-long fight against the crippling disease. However, there still exists a version of the illness known as vaccine-derived polio, which occurs in rare incidents when the weakened virus in the vaccine mutates. Two days after the WHO’s announcement, the United Nations confirmed that more than a dozen cases of vaccine-derived polio had sprung up in nine states across Sudan. In spring, Facebook posts shared tens of thousands of times falsely claimed that a polio vaccine tested by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation paralyzed 490,000 children in India.

Source: Manila Times September 19, 2020 16:07 UTC