Assessing the efficiency of Verily’s automated process for production and release of male Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes

J. Bouyer, H. Maiga and M. J. B. Vreysen,  Nature Biotechnology,  2022.

A paper by Crawford et al.1 titled ‘Efficient production of male Wolbachia-infected Aedes aegypti mosquitoes enables large-scale suppression of wild populations’ reports a mosquito control suppression trial carried out from2017 to 2018 in Fresco Country, California, USA1 . Between 7.5 million and 14.4 million Wolbachia-infected male mosquitoes were released during the study, which achieved suppression rates of 69% and 95%, respectively. Although the work provided important insights for future Aedes genetic control programs—particularly the information on the immigration of fertile females into release areas—the paper contains several omissions and errors. Below, we discuss how these relate to three main areas: regulatory oversight, entomological efficiency and, finally, cost efficiency.


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Efficient production of male Wolbachia-infected Aedes aegypti mosquitoes enables large-scale suppression of wild populations


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