Valley Fever vaccine for pets could be released ‘within the next year’

PHOENIX (AZFamily) — A Valley Fever vaccine for pets may be on its way to the public.

The new animal vaccine could be in the hands of veterinarians within the next year, according to the University of Arizona’s Valley Fever Center for Excellence Director Dr. John Galgiani.

“That vaccine is now actively being developed as a veterinarian product to prevent Valley Fever,” Galgiani said.

Animals get the fungal disease more often than humans.

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Galgiani said a Valley Fever vaccine for humans is a bit further away because it’s a higher bar to pass for the USDA.

”For humans, it just costs more, and it should for humans; you want to make sure what you get as a vaccine is safe, but also you want to have very convincing evidence that it works,” Galgiani said.

He added that he hopes new funding the school just received from the National Institutes of Health will go toward developing the vaccine for humans, but the process could take eight years for the public to receive it. Galgiani said after you get the fungal disease once, you won’t get it again. Still, he said he believes people will want the vaccine to avoid the sickness.

“Those people who get sick have an illness for weeks, months, keeps them from going to work,” he said. “If you ask people who had gotten ill from Valley Fever, they would say, ‘You know, I would have preferred a vaccine and not gone through this.’”

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