Plague vaccine is a vaccine used against Yersinia pestis to prevent the plague. Inactivated bacterial vaccines have been used since 1890 but are less effective against the pneumonic plague, so live, attenuated vaccines and recombinant protein vaccines have been developed to prevent the disease. __TOC__ Plague immunization The first plague vaccine was developed by bacteriologist Waldemar Haffkine in 1897. He tested the vaccine on himself to prove that the vaccine was safe. Later, Haffkine conducted a massive inoculation program in British India, and it is estimated that 26 million doses of Haffkine's anti-plague vaccine were sent out from Bombay between 1897 and 1925, reducing the plague mortality by 50%-85%.
A plague vaccine is used for an induction of active specific immunity in an organism susceptible to plague by means of administrating an antigenic material (a vaccine) via a variety of routes to people at risk of contracting any clinical form of plague. This method is known as plague immunization. There is strong evidence for the efficacy of administration of some plague vaccines in preventing or ameliorating the effects of a variety of clinical forms of infection by Yersinia pestis. Plague immunization also encompasses incurring a state of passive specific immunity to plague in a susceptible organism after administration of a plague serum or plague immunological in people with an immediate risk of developing the disease.
A systematic review by the Cochrane Collaboration found no studies of sufficient quality to be included in the review, and were thus unable to make any statement on the efficacy of modern plague vaccines.
According to Annie Jacobsen, author of the 2026 non-fiction work Biological War: A Scenario, the Russians are currently in possession of a plague vaccine, but the U.S. is not (despite having had one during the Vietnam War). Her book outlines a scenario not dissimilar to the potential plague virus lab leak in early October 2026 in Siberia. Jabobsen notes that multiple Soviet scientists who defected to the West in the 1990s detailed the Soviets’ research into genetically weaponizing pneumonic plague as an agent in biological warfare. She writes about the Russian state as the inheritor of such secretive programs that potentially exist despite international treaties banning such gain of function research.
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