Wednesday, 06 November 2024

European Government Confirms Plans To Vaccinate Chickens Against Bird Flu

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The Dutch government confirmed plans to vaccinate chickens against bird flu, claiming vaccines for laying hens are effective in practice.

Per Reuters:

Bird flu vaccines for laying hens are effective in practice, the Dutch government said on Tuesday, while confirming plans to vaccinate poultry against the virus that ravaged flocks around the world and is raising fears about human transmission.

Highly pathogenic avian influenza, commonly called bird flu, has killed or caused the culling of hundreds of millions of poultry globally in recent years, most of them laying hens, which sent egg prices rocketing.

Research in the laboratory of Wageningen Bioveterinary Research (WBVR) early last year had already shown that two vaccines against bird flu, produced by France's Ceva Animal Health and Germany's Boehringer Ingelheim, were effective against the virus but there had been no experiment on a farm.

“In September 2023, 1,800 day-old chicks were vaccinated against bird flu. The results show that the two tested vaccines are effective against infection with the virus eight weeks after vaccination,” the Dutch agriculture ministry said in a statement.

“The fact that the vaccines work in practice is a very important step towards the large-scale vaccination of poultry against the bird flu virus,” it said.

In addition to vaccinating chickens, there may also be a push to inoculate poultry and dairy workers that health officials claim are 'at-risk' for bird flu.

 

From the New York Post:

The United States and Europe are taking steps to acquire or manufacture H5N1 bird flu vaccines that could be used to protect at-risk poultry and dairy workers, veterinarians and lab technicians, government officials said, moves influenza experts say could curb the threat of a pandemic.

U.S officials last week said they were moving bulk vaccine from CSL Seqirus (CSL.AX), opens new tab that closely matches the current virus into finished shots that could provide 4.8 million doses of vaccine. European health officials told Reuters they were in talks to acquire CSL’s prepandemic vaccine.

Canadian health officials said they have met with GSK (GSK.L), opens new tab, maker of Canada’s seasonal flu shots, to discuss acquiring and manufacturing a prepandemic bird flu vaccine once its seasonal flu production capacity is freed up.

Other countries, including the UK, are discussing how to proceed on prepandemic vaccines, scientists said.

The actions follow the explosive spread of a new strain of bird flu that emerged in late 2020 and has caused unprecedented numbers of deaths among wild birds and domestic poultry and has begun infecting many mammal species.

Dr. Mary Talley Bowden noted the symptoms for the first two human bird flu cases in the United States amounted to “just pink eye.”


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