Atin Ito First Filipino Community Newspaper in Ontario
THE Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) on Friday announced that it had completed a trial of a vaccine against African swine fever (ASF).
BAI Assistant Director Arlene Vytiaco said the bureau had conducted the safety and efficacy trials for the vaccine.
“The safety trial was conducted in BAI while the efficacy trial was conducted in six farms in Luzon,” she added.
Vytiaco said the vaccine that was tested is the AVAC ASF LIVE vaccine from Vietnam, and it was proven that there are no side effects for pigs when the vaccine is administered.
She added that 100 percent of vaccinated pigs under the trial produced an antibody against ASF.
The BAI official said the target number of vaccines for 2023 is 600,000, but considering the swine population she said “it won’t be enough.”
Vytiaco added that the vaccine is not mandatory and will possibly be on a first-come, first-served basis.
She said it should be injected into healthy pigs only, and there must be an age requirement.
“It is only from 4 to 10 weeks of age pigs and it can’t be administered to older pigs,” Vytiaco added.
The BAI has submitted a letter of endorsement to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Vytiaco said they are now waiting for the issuance of certificate of product registration.
“Once the FDA issues the certificate of product registration, our vaccine supplier will be importing from Vietnam, where the vaccine is manufactured,” she added.
Once it arrives, Vytiaco said, then it can be commercialized.
FDA spokesman Job Aguzar said they just received the application this morning and it shall be subjected to pre-assessment.
“If acceptable, the FDA shall facilitate the evaluation of the submitted dossier to determine the quality, safety and efficacy of the ASF vaccine,” he also said.
“At the same time, a request for permit to import additional doses of the vaccine was received today to support the ongoing phase 2 clinical trial being conducted by the applicant with BAI,” Aguzar added.
Dr. Janice Garcia, cluster coordinator of the National ASF Prevention and Control Program, said there are 15 provinces that have active ASF cases reported as of June 1.
Cases are only confined in the Visayas, while there were only few detections in Luzon and Mindanao.
— Janine Alexis Miguel
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Credit belongs to: www.manilatimes.net
