Bubonic plague is a severe infectious and potentially fatal disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. It is the most common form of plague and is primarily spread through the bite of infected fleas that typically live on rodents.
The disease, also known infamously as the Black Death, ravaged Europe from 1347 to 1351, causing between 75 million and 200 million deaths (which included about 50% of the total population in Europe at the time). Those horrifying numbers still grip the imagination.
Now, in an intriguing development, COVID-19 vaccine scientists have developed a new shot that would protect against Yersinia pestis infections. Researchers explain they are now concerned about a “superbug strain.”
Scientists behind the Oxford Covid jab are developing a bubonic plague vaccine amid fears a superbug strain of the Black Death could emerge.There is no vaccine in the UK for the plague, which has killed around 200 million people worldwide throughout history.But the team behind the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus jab has now reported progress in its work on an inoculation.Three of the world’s seven known pandemics have been caused by the plague, a bacterial infection triggered by the Yersinia pestis microbe. It can be treated with antibiotics but none of the several vaccines in development are approved for use.Scientists have called for the UK to add a Black Death jab to its stockpile as the risk of a superbug strain rises.
The explanation for the concern is that there are signs the plague bacteria has already developed resistance against antibiotics currently in use.
Scientists at Porton Down’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory wrote last year that antimicrobial resistance is creating superbug strains that can’t be countered by standard antibiotics.Evolving strains which could pose a risk have already been found in Madagascar and Peru.
From 2010 to 2015, a total of 3,248 documented cases were reported globally, resulting in 584 deaths. This averages to about 650 cases annually during that period. A majority of those cases are in Madagascar and Peru, as well as a third country….the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The DRC is also home to the virulent Clade 1B monkeypox outbreak and a mystery disease that has hit children hard.
The first plague vaccine was developed in 1897 by bacteriologist Waldemar Mordechai Wolff Haffkine, who tested it on himself. This early vaccine was widely used in British India, with an estimated 26 million doses distributed between 1897 and 1925, reducing plague mortality by 50-85%.
He was hailed as the “the Jewish Jenner” (Jenner having created the smallpox vaccine), as Haffkine also developed a vaccine for cholera.
When the bubonic plague hit Bombay in October 1896 with a mortality rate double that of cholera, the Indian government asked Haffkine to assist, and he commenced work in a crude laboratory and assumed the daunting task of developing the world’s first vaccine against plague.Amazingly, working almost entirely by himself, he succeeded in developing a vaccine that was ready for testing only three months later and, again, he first tested it on himself on January 10, 1897. Soon after he announced his successful results to the authorities, plague broke out at Bombay’s Byculla House of Correction. He conducted a controlled test there, the results of which were that the majority of deaths were among the unvaccinated.
Only China and Russia have licensed a live bubonic plague vaccine, which is based on an attenuated Y. pestis strain.
However, this type of vaccine is associated with some adverse effects and does not provide long-term immunity.
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