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While humans are still waiting for a vaccine with a coronavirus vaccine, Colorado’s endangered black-footed ferrets have already been vaccinated.
One hundred and twenty ferrets (Mustela nigripes) – once considered to be completely extinct – have been vaccinated with an experimental veterinary vaccine COVID-19, according to the Associated Press.
Ferrets are very likely to die from SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Mink, a close cousin of ferrets, has already been found to contract coronavirus in fur farms and, alarmingly, in nature. This is dangerous because every time the virus is transmitted between humans and animals, it has more possibilities of developing mutations.
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“For highly contagious respiratory viruses, it’s really important to keep the animal reservoir in mind,” said Corey Casper, vaccinologist and CEO of the Infectious Disease Research Institute in Seattle. Colorado Public Radio (RCR). “If the virus comes back to the host animal and mutates, or changes, in such a way that it could be reintroduced into humans, then humans would no longer have that immunity. That worries me a lot.”
Black-footed ferrets are native to the grasslands of the northern Great Plains. They were once believed to be extinct, but a few individuals were rediscovered in Wyoming in 1981, according to the US Fish & Wildlife Service. Through a captive breeding and release program, approximately 370 black-footed ferrets exist in the wild.
Because of these low numbers and the susceptibility of ferrets to coronaviruses, conservationists feared the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic could threaten this fragile recovery. Scientists from National black-footed ferret conservation center near Fort Collins, Colo., began injecting their captive breeding population with an experimental vaccine in late summer. The vaccine is different from those approved so far in humans. It uses a purified segment of the vaccine – the spike protein – and a chemical adjuvant that promotes the immune response rather than the mRNA platform used by vaccines against the human coronavirus.
The center has now completed the inoculations, leaving 60 ferrets unvaccinated if there is a problem with the vaccine, according to CPR.
So far, vaccinated ferrets appear to be healthy and tests show anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in their blood. However, it is not yet clear whether the vaccine actually protects against the disease, as these efficacy trials are not yet complete in ferrets. The efficacy trials are the equivalent of the Phase 3 human trials that recently enabled Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to receive Emergency Use Clearance (EUA) from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
“We can do this stuff experimentally in animals that we can’t do in humans,” Rocke told CPR.
Originally posted on Live Science.
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