A monovalent attenuated serotype 2 bluetongue virus vaccine confers homologous protection in sheep

An outbreak of bluetongue caused by bluetongue virus serotype 2 virus in certain Mediterranean countries during 1999/2000, presented an opportunity to produce a monovalent type 2 vaccine. Since no data have been published previously on the protection conferred by the current live attenuated bluetongue vaccine strains used in the polyvalent vaccine, a challenge experiment was performed to determine the degree of homologous protection induced by the type 2 vaccine strain. The standard vaccine dose of 5 x 10(4) pfu of vaccine conferred 99.7% protection against clinical disease and no viraemia was detected in the vaccinates.