To vaccinate or cull? Utilizing spreadable vaccines to optimize management of vampire bat rabies | New Voices in Infection Biology

  • Datum: 30.09.2020
  • Uhrzeit: 16:00
  • Vortragende(r): Kevin Bakker
  • NIH, USA
  • Ort: Zoom video conference
  • Gastgeber: Matthieu Domenech de Cellès
  • Kontakt: vseminars@mpiib-berlin.mpg.de
To vaccinate or cull? Utilizing spreadable vaccines to optimize management of vampire bat rabies | New Voices in Infection Biology

If you are interested in joining the seminar, please contact: vseminars@mpiib-berlin.mpg.de

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Talk abstract:

Controlling multi-host pathogens within their natural wildlife reservoirs has inherent advantages over targeting humans or domestic animals that contribute little to long-term disease dynamics. Interventions such as vaccination and culling have the potential to reduce or eliminate pathogens, but it can be difficult to obtain sufficient population-level coverage to impact transmission, particularly for reclusive wildlife. Interventions that autonomously spread from treated individuals to susceptible hosts are a promising theoretical option, but have not been explored in real-world systems. We used field experiments with an innocuous biomarker to approximate the spread of oral vaccines or poisons (“vampiricide”) in wild populations of common vampire bats (Desmodus rotundus), the primary reservoir of rabies in Latin America. Mathematical models incorporated field-derived transfer rates to examine whether vaccination or culling was more effective at controlling rabies within bat colonies.

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