Animal Quarantine Office

In many third world countries, where rabies is endemic in dog populations, humans continue to be at risk of contracting the disease. Vaccination is the most effective form of prophylaxis for people, yet it often fails to adequately protect dogs. The most major implications are the costs of post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) after an exposure occurs and the loss of human life and productivity due to early mortality from rabies (about 60,000 deaths annually). The largest rabies death tolls can be found in the world’s poorest regions, where rabies vaccinations for domestic dogs are uncommon and PEP is scarce. Mass vaccination of dogs, neutering programs, patient PEP, strengthening laboratory and human resources, education and awareness, and animal and human rabies surveillance are all common methods used to prevent, control, and ultimately eradicate dog-mediated human rabies. Current rabies control initiatives, however, pay little attention to the role that ecological and socioeconomic variables play in the disease’s occurrence and spread. To help better inform rabies control strategies, we address in this work the ways in which ecological and socioeconomic factors affect the occurrence and spread of rabies.

Since its emergence on November 9, 2021, the Omicron variant has spread quickly across the globe as a new severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and became the variant of concern at an astonishingly rapid rate. This new variant was found to be a massively mutated virus from the original virus formation. The World Health Organization announced that the Omicron variant developed a significantly high risk of infection, decreasing the hope that SARS-CoV-2 would be overcome as soon as the Delta variant subsided and the world would regain normalcy. Based on the currently available data, the Omicron variant carries a greater risk of re-infection. Nonetheless, it is widely accepted among scientists that the current COVID-19 mRNA-based booster has a certain degree of effectiveness to the Omicron variant, regardless of the first and second primary doses. However, information on the Omicron variant, in terms of genomics, infectivity, and competence of vaccines, is still limited. This article aims to epitomize the genomics and dissemination of the Omicron variant and the efficiency of vaccines against the Omicron variant, which can prompt the understanding of medical researchers for further investigation in the near future.

Lumpy skin disease (LSD) is a re-emerging trans-boundary viral disease of cattle and buffalo (Alkhamis, & Vander Waal, 2016; Sudhakar et al., 2019) with great economic impact (Gari et al., 2011; Alkhamis, & Vander Waal, 2016). The disease is endemic in most African countries and has spread through southeast Europe, Middle East, and South Asia (Calistri et al., 2020). By 2019, periodic outbreaks of LSD have been reported in neighboring countries of Nepal i.e. China and India (OIE, 2019; 2020a; 2020b). Nepal experienced the first outbreak in June, 2020.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1007/s13337-020-00593-z.].