Does African swine fever actually infect cattle and sheep?
African swine fever is a rather hot topic right now, and many farmers have suffered greatly from it, incurring losses to varying degrees. So does African swine fever infect cattle and sheep? Let's take a look!
1. Does African swine fever infect cattle and sheep
African swine fever currently does not infect cattle and sheep. Swine fever is an acute, highly contagious febrile disease, and there is currently no effective treatment. There is also no vaccine to prevent it, and once the disease occurs, the mortality rate is extremely high.
2. Vaccine development
On May 24, 2019, the African swine fever vaccine independently developed by the Harbin Veterinary Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences achieved phased results. In the stage of creating an African swine fever vaccine, China mainly achieved five advances:
First, the first African swine fever virus strain in China was isolated. A viral cell isolation and culture system and an animal infection model were established, and its biological characteristics such as infectivity, pathogenicity and transmission capacity were studied relatively systematically.
Second, candidate African swine fever vaccines were created, and laboratory-stage research proved that two of the candidate vaccine strains have good biosafety and immune protection effects.
Third, the two candidate vaccine strains have strong genetic stability in vitro and in vivo. When the two candidate vaccine strains were continuously passaged in primary cells in vitro, their biological characteristics and genome sequences showed no obvious changes; when continuously passaged in pigs, no obvious phenomenon of virulence reversion was found either.
Fourth, the minimum protective inoculation dose was clarified, proving that high-dose and repeated-dose inoculation are safe.
Fifth, the process research for pre-clinical pilot-scale products was initially completed, production seed banks for two candidate vaccines have been established, the purity and exogenous virus testing of the vaccine production seed batches was initially completed, and the cell culture and freeze-drying processes of the candidate vaccines were initially optimized.