Inactivated strain, encouraging news 🦠💉

🇫🇷🔬 A laboratory of the French government agency ANSES is reporting promising initial results in the search for a vaccine against African Swine Fever (ASF). The study was conducted in the inactivated strain currently circulating in the EU and confirmed that most pigs inoculated intramuscularly or oronasally show only mild symptoms. Here’s why that’s so encouraging:

     • Survivability during the tests wasn’t perfect, but was much better than with the original viral strain; 

     • Infected pigs developed an immune response, which allowed them to resist infection without showing any symptoms as early as two weeks after vaccination;

     • The vaccine isn’t produced by genetic manipulation, which makes its use in the wild easier to be authorized;

     • Intramuscular vaccination is the most commonly used method on farms, while oral vaccination could be used to vaccinate wild boars using baits.

🔎 Learn more about the research by reading this.