The team behind the Oxford AstraZeneca covid vaccine say they are developing an injection that could prevent the bubonic plague
Scientist who introduced the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine during the covid pandemic are now working on the UK’s first bubonic plague jab, as fears for the next deadly outbreak rise.
The Black Death in the 1300s is estimated to have killed half the population of Europe. The bubonic plague is 30 per cent fatal without treatment and is characterised by swollen and painful lymph nodes around a flea bite. Three of the world’s seven known pandemics have been caused by the plague, a bacterial infection triggered by the Yersinia pestis microbe.
Since the introduction of antibiotics there has been less fear over the plague, but with the rise of antibiotic resistance, the scientists behind the Oxford jab feel now is the time for the UK to be ready. There is no vaccine in the UK for the plague currently.
The Oxford team say a trial of its vaccine on 40 healthy adults which started in 2021 has yielded results which show it is safe and able to produce an immune response in people. Professor Sir Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, told The Telegraph that the results of the trial are to be submitted to a journal for peer review within weeks, with further clinical trials expected.
He said: “There are no licensed plague vaccines in the UK. Antibiotics are the only treatment. There are some licensed vaccines in Russia. The risk in the UK is currently very low. Previous historical pandemics that had high mortality were associated with initiation from fleas on rodents but were driven by person to person spread.”
Scientists at Porton Down’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) wrote in a paper in the journal NPJ Vaccines that vaccines need to be expedited “to prevent future disastrous plague outbreaks”.
Professor Tim Atkins, a DTSL Fellow and lead in the chemical, biological and radiological division, told The Telegraph: “If a person gets infected with an antibiotic-resistant strain of the plague bacteria, treatment might be less effective, and they could remain sick for longer. For pneumonic plague (spread by inhalation), this increases the chances of infecting others nearby.
“While resistant strains exist, there are still other antibiotics that can be used as backups. Antibiotic resistance isn’t unique in the plague; it’s also a concern for common infections like MRSA in the UK.”
