Vaccine value profile for severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS)

Bandavirus dabieense is the tickborne causative agent of Severe Fever with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome (SFTS), a disease with low incidence but high severity among detected cases and high likelihood of continued geographic spread. To date, evidence of human infections has been reported in eight countries across Asia and in Kenya; surveillance systems in China, the Republic of Korea, and Japan report most cases. Seroprevalence findings in healthy populations have revealed asymptomatic infection and under-ascertainment in endemic areas. In the absence of dedicated therapeutics and vaccines, recommendations for SFTS control focus on prevention of tick bites. However, increasingly, evidence of context-specific transmission pathways that include diverse competent arthropod vectors and non-human mammalian intermediate hosts emphasize that transmission via direct tick bite explains an unknown fraction of infections. Rural populations engaged in agriculture, populations living in transitional zones with frequent tick exposures, and health workers are expected to be at highest risk of infection, while disease burden is greatest in the elderly. Like other viral zoonoses, SFTS has significant and context-specific epidemiological complexity while also being rare, rendering assessment of burden and evaluation of intervention effectiveness challenging. However, its recognition as a global health threat has led to heightened post-pandemic investment in vaccine development. This Vaccine Value Profile (VVP) is intended to overview the current state of evidence on SFTS, present most plausible vaccine use cases in light of the evidence, and highlight persisting uncertainties that require address before full assessment of the potential public health, economic, and societal value of vaccines in the development pipeline can be undertaken. With some adaptation, the VVP has been developed using an existing template by a group of subject matter experts from academia, industry, government, and clinical practice. It has been framed in the context of a One Health approach to control of emerging diseases.