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Promising results as Chinese vaccine trial sees African swine fever fatality rate fall to zero
- While African swine fever has a high mortality rate, in testing the Chinese-developed vaccine candidate, there were no fatalities
- The virus outbreak has devastated the global pork industry in recent years, with 1.5 million animals lost since January 2021
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A promising new vaccine candidate has been developed by Chinese scientists to combat African swine fever, a highly contagious virus in pigs which can have a mortality rate as high as 100 per cent.
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The virus has devastated the pork industry globally in recent years, according to Weng Changjiang, co-author of the research detailing the potential vaccine.
“It has resulted in economic losses of hundreds of billions of yuan for the swine industry, affecting the livelihoods of many people and industry development,” he told the Post on Tuesday.
Currently, there is no vaccine that is effective against the swine fever virus. Instead, governments around the world have sought to control and prevent the disease by culling herds, restricting the transport of pigs and improving hygiene on farms.
Vaccines generally work by stimulating the immune system, including antibodies, to defend against a particular virus or bacteria. To achieve this, vaccines show the body a harmless version of the pathogen, or part of it so that it can remember it.
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For this vaccine candidate, Weng’s team designed a live but weakened version of the virus to trigger a strong immune reaction.
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