disease vector

Reader's Digest 2月号の記事 "Looking to the Future" から引用します。
The lifesavers included chlorination and other means of safguarding drinking water, the lowly toilet and sewer, the control of disease vectors such as mosquitoes and fleas, programs for large-scale vaccination, the promotion of handwriting, and developments in basic prenatal and perinatal case such as encouraging nursing and body contact.

引用文に出てきた "disease vectors" の "vector" は日本語でベクトルとして使われている単語と同じスペルですが、 どんな意味でしょうか？　辞書を見ます。"vector" に次の意味があることが分かりました。

・Oxford English Dictionary: An organism, typically a biting insect or tick, that transmits a disease or parasite from one animal or plant to another.: ‘Now, in the 21st century, our researchers are still studying the relationships between animal hosts, insect and arthropod vectors, and disease agents.’
・Collins Dictionary: A vector is an insect or other organism that causes a disease by carrying a germ or parasite from one person or animal to another.: This could have caused increased numbers of mosquitoes that could serve as vectors for the disease.
・Cambridge English Dictionary: an insect or animal that carries a disease from one animal or plant to another: Mosquitoes are the vectors of malaria.
なるほど、病原菌や寄生虫を媒介する生物ですね。