Future of ASF Vaccine Undetermined as Investigation of Deaths of Vaccinated Pigs Continues

The Executive Director of the Swine Health Information Center says the future of an experimental African Swine Fever vaccine will become more clear once the investigation of the deaths of about 100 vaccinated pigs in Vietnam is complete.

Testing of a gene deleted African Swine Fever vaccine, developed by USDA's Ag Research Service and licensed to a company in Vietnam, was suspended after about 100 out of 600 pigs that had been vaccinated on farms in Central Vietnam died and 400 others experienced what was termed a vaccine reaction.

Dr. Paul Sundberg, the Executive Director of the Swine Health Information Center and a member of the Swine Innovation Porc Coordinated African Swine Fever Research Working Group, says there will be complete investigations of the incident and that will lead to the next steps for the vaccine.

Clip-Dr. Paul Sundberg-Swine Health Information Center:

Either that will have to be pulled back to try to figure out what happened and how to stop that from happening again and that may take some time or it may be that it's not vaccine related at all and Vietnam is going to be able to go ahead with commercialization of this vaccine.It's still to be determined and I'm hopeful that we will hear within the next few weeks what the Department of Animal Health in Vietnam has found in their investigation.
I will add that this is one prototype of a vaccine.

I do know that there are other prototype vaccines that are being worked on.USDA ARS on Plum Island has another vaccine that’s a gene deleted vaccine that they are also working on for testing and commercialization as well as other laboratories around the world.

So, while this may be a setback in our vaccination potential for African Swine Fever and that's underscoring may, there's still a lot of work that goes on and we're still trying to make progress as quickly as possible.

Dr. Sundberg stresses the incident may not be vaccine related at all but that's something that we need to know.