Helping wild animals through vaccination: could this happen for coronaviruses like SARS-CoV-2?

Abstract

Wild animals can suffer and die prematurely due to many factors, including harmful weather conditions, hunger, thirst and malnutrition, parasitism, conflicts, and accidents.[1] One of these factors, which painfully kills vast numbers of animals, is disease.[2] Fortunately for many animals, however, wild animal vaccination programs have been conducted for decades already. For the most part, they have been implemented to prevent zoonotic diseases from spreading from nonhuman animals to humans (or to other animals humans live with). But, regardless of this, such programs have prevented huge amounts of suffering and saved the lives of many wild animals. Thorough vaccination efforts can even eradicate a disease by drastically reducing the transmission rate. For example, as we will see below, rabies has been eliminated from large areas of North America and Europe. These successes show that it would be feasible to implement similar programs out of a concern for animals themselves. Scientists have shown support for gaining more knowledge about this method of helping animals in the wild.[3]