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Vaccine For The West Nile Virus

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Herd immunity is the form of immunity that directly occurs as a result of individuals who are vaccinated versus those who are not. In a given naive population, the west nile virus can spread randomly throughout individuals, with the contact of each other only accelerating the spread. In a population where half has randomly received some form of vaccination, certain barriers between those that are vaccinated can protect specific individuals who have not been vaccinated against the spread of the virus (Vaccines Today, 2015). In all, the percentage of infected individuals is much less in a somewhat vaccinated population than in an entirely naive population. Herd immunity can develop in the initial stages of the use of the west nile virus …show more content…

The amount of people in a given population that would need vaccine immunization in order to achieve herd immunity with the west nile virus would vary within given populations and location most importantly, as the virus itself is more prevalent in certain parts of the world . The idea itself of a population that could receive vaccinations to protect individuals and to protect even more vulnerable members of their communities by reducing the spread of the disease enough to further the development of the west nile virus, which can so easily affect any individual prone to some form of interaction with mosquitos.

The vaccination process would not be a simple administered injection because of the underlying fact that each mosquito can potentially transmit a different type of west nile virus lineage. The vaccine would have to be specific to that west nile virus lineage, as transmitted per mosquito. In the ideal clinic, a blood sample of an infected individual would be collected and analyzed for the formation of antibodies against the specific virus lineage. This would ensure that that the correct virus lineage would be targeted in the vaccine. The proteins to be further administered with the west nile vaccine would originate from a serum sample collected afterwards with the specific virus strain. Multiple intravenous and intradermal injections of the plasmid DNA proposed vaccine

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