Chinese scientists have developed new vaccine carrying mosquitoes that can bite bats and provide them immunity against rabies. This strategy may help prevent viruses from transmitting from animals to humans that could potentially cause future outbreaks.
Bats have long been considered reservoirs of dangerous viruses such as rabies and Nipah virus. For this reason, they are among the key sources of spillover events, where viruses are transmitted from animals to humans.
Although vaccinating bats could be an effective way to prevent the spread of these viruses to humans, there has so far been no effective strategy to vaccinate large populations of bats in the wild.
Now, scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology have attempted to create immunity against rabies and Nipah virus in bats using vaccine equipped mosquitoes and saline based traps.
According to researchers, this method is called environmental vaccination, which is considered safer and more effective as it does not require capturing or directly handling animals.
