The Role of Delaware Bay Horseshoe Crabs in a COVID-19 Vaccine

http://www.wboc.com/story/42742322/the-role-of-delaware-bay-horseshoe-crabs-role-in-a-covid19-vaccine

The Role of Delaware Bay Horseshoe Crabs in a COVID-19 Vaccine

Conserve #Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey Executive Director David Wheeler worries what this will do to the horseshoe crab population, which has been declining for decades.

“Horseshoe crabs have been swimming the earth for over 400 million years,” Wheeler says. “We celebrate the fact that horseshoe crabs can serve this role, but at the same time we encourage the role of #synthetic lysate.”

Wheeler says the labs are supposed to return the horseshoe crabs to the water within 36 hours after taking their blood, but he worries that the race for a COVID-19 vaccine could potentially put them in higher demand.

“We would not only have these tremendous impacts to our medicine and public health potentially, but also to the ecosystem, all the shorebirds, the fish, the reptiles like Diamondback terrapins that depend on horseshoe crab eggs.”

#SARSCoV2 #lysate

[I’ve seen the pictures and decided not to repost them because they would turn your stomach.]