Mpox vaccine maker ready to produce 10 million doses

COPENHAGEN, Denmark - Danish drugmaker Bavarian Nordic said Thursday it was ready to produce up to 10 million doses of its vaccine targeting mpox by 2025 after the World Health Organization declared a surge in the virus in Africa a global public health emergency.

Alarmed by a rise in cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the spread of mpox to nearby countries, WHO experts said Wednesday that the "situation constitutes a public health emergency of international concern".

"We have additional manufacturing capacity of two million doses for 2024 and (a total of) 10 million doses by 2025," Rolf Sass Sorensen, vice-president of Bavarian Nordic, told AFP.

The company is awaiting orders from the countries concerned before starting manufacturing. "We need to see the contracts," Sorensen said.

The Danish laboratory says it has some 500,000 doses in stock.

Shares in Bavarian Nordic, whose vaccine against mpox has been licensed since 2019, rose nearly eight percent on the Copenhagen Stock Exchange on Thursday, following the WHO announcement. This followed a 12 percent climb on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, the African Union's health agency, announced that over 200,000 doses of the vaccine were to be deployed in Africa, following an agreement with the European Union (EU) and Bavarian Nordic.

A total of 38,465 cases of the disease, formerly known as monkeypox, have been reported in 16 African countries since January 2022, with 1,456 deaths.

There has been a 160 percent increase in cases this year compared to the previous year, according to data published last week by the health agency.

Bavarian Nordic mainly supplies it's mpox vaccine -- called Jynneos in the United States and Imvanex in the European Union -- to governments and international organisations, but began marketing it on the US market in April. — Agence France-Presse