Danish drugmaker Bavarian Nordic is planning to produce up to 10 million doses of its mpox vaccine by 2025.
Rolf Sass Sorensen, vice-president of Bavarian Nordic, told AFP that the company has “additional manufacturing capacity of two million doses for 2024 and (a total of) 10 million doses by 2025.”
Before increasing its production, however, Sorensen said Bavarian Nordinc needs to “see the contracts,” Barron’s reported. It currently has 500,000 doses of its mpox vaccine.
The announcement comes as WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared monkeypox a global public health emergency.
“The emergence of a new clade of mpox, its rapid spread in eastern DRC, and the reporting of cases in several neighbouring countries are very worrying,” he said. “On top of outbreaks of other mpox clades in DRC and other countries in Africa, it’s clear that a coordinated international response is needed to stop these outbreaks and save lives.”
Following the WHO’s declaration, shares of Bavarian Nordic rose almost 8% on the Copenhagen Stock Exchange.
Last week, the WHO said that it has “developed a regional response plan, requiring US$ 15 million to support surveillance, preparedness and response activities” for mpox.
The WHO Director-General added that he has “triggered the process for Emergency Use Listing” for two mpox vaccines.
A study published in June in the journal Nature Medicine called for “intensified local surveillance, enhanced community engagement and case management, and targeted mpox vaccination for individuals at risk” in regions seeing cases of mpox.
Last year, however, the CDC announced that many of those who had received the JYNNEOS mpox vaccine became infected with the virus. The agency admitted that “vaccine-induced immunity is not complete.”
