Bavarian Nordic said on Thursday it could supply 13 million doses of its mpox vaccine by the end of 2025, up from a previous forecast of 10 million doses, and is exploring options to significantly expand its capacity.
No cases of the more transmissible strain of the virus have been confirmed in the United States, but experts are preparing for that possibility following a World Health Organization declaration last month of a global public health emergency, the second such declaration in two years.
The EU has pledged to share 215,000 vaccine doses to affected African countries. An additional 351,500 doses will be donated by at least eight EU member states, bringing the total number of vaccine doses to at least 566,500.
According to Jay Hooper, a virologist from the US Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases and the study's senior author, researchers aimed to find a "sweet spot" in mpox vaccines that balances high safety and efficacy. Current mpox vaccines, originally developed for smallpox, use a weakened live virus that limits their protective efficacy compared to older, potentially infectious vaccines.
Mpox is a viral infection that causes flu-like symptoms and pus-filled lesions. The virus has long affected Africa, but a new strain, clade Ib, has recently heightened global concerns. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared it a global health emergency on August 14 after cases started to spread from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to nearby countries.
France this week announced that it would donate 100,000 mpox vaccine doses to countries suffering from the emergency and the United States has said it will donate 50,000 mpox vaccine doses to Democratic Republic of Congo, which has reported more than 16,000 cases and 500 deaths this year.
Infectious disease experts also said then that there was no need for visitors from countries where mpox is circulating, or Singaporeans who are returning home, to quarantine themselves if they do not have any symptoms. According to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, there have been more than 27,000 cases and more than 1,300 deaths since January 2023 in the current outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The first mpox case reported by the Philippines this year is a mild variant and not the deadly strain sparking global alarm, Health Secretary Teodoro Herbosa said Wednesday. Nine mpox cases were reported by Philippine authorities in 2022 and 2023, with the previous most recent one last December.
Danish biotech firm Bavarian Nordic could ramp up production of its mpox vaccine even before having orders lined up, based on the outcome of talks this week with the World Health Organisation, the company's CEO told Reuters on Tuesday.
P K Mishra, principal secretary to the prime minister, convened a high-level meeting on Sunday to assess the country's preparedness for Mpox. Officials reported no current Mpox cases in India. According to the current assessment, the risk of a large outbreak with sustained transmission is low.
The figure accounts for three strains of the virus, of which one is the new more deadly and more transmissible Clade 1b which prompted the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Wednesday to declare an international health emergency -- the agency's highest alert.
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