Vaccine crisis ‘raises risk of getting deadly animal viruses’

FALLING rates of measles vaccinations could put us at risk from deadly animal viruses.

The vaccine crisis is thought to have contributed to 142,000 deaths from measles worldwide last year.

And an expert has warned that it may also make it easier for similar viruses in cattle and dogs to make the jump to humans.

The Daily Mail has already launched a major campaign, Give Children Their Jabs, amid falling uptake of all ten routine childhood vaccinations.

Cases of measles in England tripled in a year from 259 to 971 between 2017 and 2018.

Only 86 per cent of children in England have received their second dose of the measles, mumps and rubella jab, below the 95 per cent coverage experts believe is necessary to stop outbreaks spreading.

Now Professor Jonathan Ball, an expert in emerging viruses, has warned we may have been more protected from animal viruses in the past. This is because most people were vaccinated against the measles virus, which is genetically similar to the source of canine distemper – which has already mutated to affect and kill monkeys – and PPRV, which usually infects sheep and goats.

Humans are now likely to be at greater risk from these viruses as our immune systems have not been vaccinated to recognise and fight them.

Writing for the BBC, Professor

Ball, from Nottingham University said: ‘For animal viruses to infect humans, they need to have the right genetic changes to make the jump and people have to be susceptible. That means they need people who are not vaccinated or have never been infected with measles before.

‘However, there are only a handful of animal viruses this applies to, and, while they can kill animals, we don’t know what they would do to us or how infectious they might be.’

As animal viruses do not tend to circulate in the UK, there is probably no direct threat to Britons.

However, measles belongs to a group of highly similar viruses called morbilliviruses, found in mammals, which are potentially able to cross the ‘species barrier’ into humans. These latch on to the same receptor in human cells as they do in animal cells.

It is possible that such viruses could infect people in the UK if they were brought over from other countries – or if unassuming Britons picked them up while abroad.