LAUSR

Significance Spillover of wildlife viruses causes global health and economic burdens and remains largely unpreventable. Vaccines that disrupt virus transmission within wildlife reservoirs might prevent spillover but face the unresolved challenge of delivering vaccines to remote and reclusive wildlife populations. Exploiting benign viruses as self-spreading vaccines offers a possible solution. A betaherpesvirus found in vampire bats is a potential candidate vector for a transmissible vaccine targeting vampire bat rabies, an important source of rabies in Latin America, but the dynamics of its transmission in natural bat populations remain unknown. Using epidemiological models and field-derived viral genomic data, we simulate how a future betaherpesvirus-based vaccine might spread. We demonstrate its capacity for high vaccine coverage and long-term prevention of rabies outbreaks.