![]() ![]() However, less than three months later, state media reported that vaccinations had been temporarily suspended following the deaths of around 750 inoculated pigs. After an outbreak of the virus in 2019 led to the culling of more than 2 million pigs, the Vietnamese government planned to administer the vaccine to 600,000 animals in 20 provinces. The risks were laid bare this year after Vietnam announced in June it would become the first country in the world to administer an ASF vaccine. skip past newsletter promotionĪ staff member stands behind vials of African swine fever vaccine for pigs during a presentation of the vaccine in Vietnam in June 2022. “Whenever you start to vaccinate hundreds of thousands of pigs, you might find out some things that weren’t apparent from the smaller scale,” Dixon says. With several promising vaccines now identified and rigorously tested for safety, the focus has shifted to large-scale trials. And there’s not enough of a history to know exactly what’s going to happen.” “People are quite nervous about it because the thing with a live attenuated vaccine – which all of these are – is basically you’re releasing a live virus into the field. “People often ask why it is taking so long,” says Linda Dixon, a virologist who leads ASF research at the institute. People are quite nervous because with a live attenuated vaccine you’re basically releasing a live virus into the field Linda Dixon, Pirbright InstituteĪt the Pirbright Institute in the UK, a team focused on ASF has been refining its own potential vaccine candidate for the past two years. Researchers at Harbin Veterinary Research Institute in China say they have made advances on a live attenuated vaccine, while the Catalan research institute CReSA-IRTA has found multiple potential vaccine candidates. Similar efforts are playing out around the world. The aim is to have the vaccine ready to roll out by late 2024, according to Sánchez-Vizcaíno.Ī sausage processing factory in Spain, one of the world’s biggest pigmeat producers. Broad questions continue to hover over the investigation, such as whether the vaccine developed in Spain would be equally effective in other regions and how often it would need to be administered. The focus is now on carrying out large-scale tests to see how the candidates interact with other illnesses or pregnant sows. The scientist is coordinating an EU-funded global consortium that, since its launch in 2019, has homed in on three vaccine candidates with the potential for use on domestic pigs and wild boars. The experience – along with the meteoric rise in Europe’s wild boar population – has cemented Sánchez-Vizcaíno’s view that a vaccine is the best hope for halting ASF. The Iberian peninsula stands out as a singular example after a strain of ASF was discovered in Portugal in 1957 – and again in 1960 – the Spanish and Portuguese governments waged a decades-long battle, using preventive culling and protecting domestic pigs from vectors such as soft ticks and wild boars, before declaring the virus eradicated in 1995. “You have to know the virus really well and understand where it hides and its tricks.” ![]() “While it is possible to eradicate ASF without vaccination, it takes a long time to do it,” says José Manuel Sánchez-Vizcaíno, a professor of animal health at Complutense University in Madrid. The only tool currently available to battle the virus, he adds, “is to emphasise to farmers the importance of enhanced biosecurity”.Īgainst this background, pressure has grown to create an ASF vaccine. “This is the biggest animal disease outbreak we’ve ever had on the planet,” says Dirk Pfeiffer, a veterinary epidemiologist at City University of Hong Kong. Photograph: Reutersįrom Papua New Guinea to the Dominican Republic, reports of the virus rolled in from 45 countries across five continents, forcing the protective culling of pigs, leaving family farms devastated and markets reeling from export bans. Pigs wait to be buried alive in a pit next to workers in protective suits and excavators following an African swine fever outbreak in the area, in Beihai, China.
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