While outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses (HPAIV) in Europe used to be rare and geographically contained, the situation has dramatically changed in the last few years with thousands of outbreaks reported in domestic poultry and wild birds. Despite being an intensive field of research, many unknowns remain as we are still struggling to predict HPAIV incursion in poultry, avoid viral spread and limit the socio-economic impact entailed predominantly by control measures. Vaccination of poultry against avian influenza, which used to be prohibited in the European Union (EU) due to trade restrictions, is now being given full consideration, as it is becoming clear that traditional prevention and control approaches alone will not curb the accelerating pace of occurrence of devastating HPAIV epidemics. However, vaccinating poultry does not come without important challenges.
The project VIVACE, an MSCA doctoral network, aims at putting together an ambitious network of 13 PhD scholarships, to contribute to fully integrate poultry vaccination approaches into efficient management strategies for HPAIV. This will be done by unravelling the impact current and upcoming EU vaccination policies will have on avian influenza virus evolution, surveillance and control strategies and societal burden of HPAI. For this, VIVACE will use a combination of disciplines from life sciences, epidemiology, computer sciences and social and behavioural sciences. The consortium gathers 15 leading universities or research institutes and 5 private companies, securing both inter-sectoriality and wide geographic distribution with tailored epidemiological and vaccination contexts. More info on the VIVACE doctoral network can be found here https://www.inrae.fr/en/news/management-avian-influenza-vaccination-context.

In this PhD project, we aim at developing data-driven model-based decision-support tools to identify efficient poultry vaccination strategies. Specific objectives are 1) to further develop existing between-farm transmission models of HPAI conceived at the host institutions by incorporating vaccination strategies taking into account (i) its impact on virus transmissibility and HPAI clinical manifestation (ii) its impact on surveillance effectiveness and (iii) its impact on biosecurity compliance, 2) to calibrate the transmission model using recent HPAI epidemics and preliminary results from vaccination challenges and (pre) clinical trials and 3) to identify optimised vaccination strategies that allow to minimise HPAI epidemiological impact while minimizing the number of vaccine doses. This project is expected to generate new knowledge on the impact poultry vaccination has on HPAI epidemic dynamics and evidence-based recommendations on HPAI prevention and management, including vaccination.