Promising results in France with an ASF vaccine

The French Food Safety Agency (ANSES), which is the reference laboratory in France for African swine fever (ASF), inactivated the Georgia 2007/1 viral strain, which is currently circulating in the European Union. During the control of the effects of this heat inactivation, an attenuated strain, derived from the Georgia strain, was detected. This strain only caused a mild fever in the infected animal, whereas infection with the Georgia strain is generally fatal in 100% of cases. The researchers carried out a series of studies on this attenuated strain and confirmed the weak symptoms in most of the pigs inoculated with this virus by the intramuscular or oronasal route. Although the safety was not perfect, the survival rate was much higher than with the original viral strain. Intramuscular vaccination is the most widely used method on farms, but oral vaccination could allow vaccinating wild boars by baiting. This method was used for classical swine fever in the early 2000s and made ...