JAKARTA
Experts in the Philippines are struggling to complete clinical trials on a vaccine to stop the spread of African swine flu, the Philippines News Agency reported on Thursday.
The country is targeting a local African swine flu vaccine to be completed by 2023 or 2024.
Agriculture Secretary William Dar said the results of the second phase of the trial would be out at the end of June.
“If this is the same outcome as in this Phase 1, we would recommend a massive vaccination for all the pigs we have across the country,” he said.
Dar refers to the encouraging results posted by preliminary trials conducted by the Bureau of Animal Industry and the Universal Robina Corporation.
Deputy Department of Science and Technology Rowena Guevara said that BioAssets Corp. spearheaded ongoing research and intends to develop an African swine flu testing kit first.
“They’re going to prioritize the test kits, maybe end of the year or early next year, and then for the vaccine, they might spend two years on that, so maybe by the end of 2023, or 2024 we’ve got a vaccine,” he said.
Previously, Vietnam became the first country to produce an African swine flu vaccine.
African swine flu, first detected in Africa in 1921, has been fatal to pigs.
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