Could vaccines for animals instead of humans help prevent the next COVID or monkeypox pandemics?
How do we vaccinate wildlife? "There are many ways you can go about vaccinating wildlife" Scott Nuisner, a Professor of Biological Sciences and one of the authors of a study on the topic first published in Nature, Ecology & Evolution in 2020, told Euronews Next. "We already do this actually in North America and Europe to control rabies," he explained. "For instance, in North America, we vaccinate raccoons against rabies by dropping vaccines that are in edible baits across the landscape, out of planes or helicopters. And the raccoons eat it and they become vaccinated against rabies. And, of course, that protects us and our livestock and our pets". This solution has proven quite successful but Nuisner specified that, for it to work, you must have the right resources available - funds to fly helicopters around and pay for the baits - and a species that’s "long-lived". "Raccoons are short-lived from our perspective, but they're very long-lived relative to something like a rodent," Nuisner said.
