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Bavarian Nordic A/S, the only company with an approved monkeypox vaccine, said it was preparing to work through the night to meet rising demand after the virus outbreak was declared a global emergency.
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Bloomberg News
Christian Wienberg
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(Bloomberg) — Bavarian Nordic A/S, the only company with an approved monkeypox vaccine, said it was preparing to work through the night to meet rising demand after the virus outbreak was declared a global emergency.
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The monkeypox outbreak, which has spread to about 16,000 people in more than 70 countries in just a few months, was declared a public health emergency of international concern by the head of the World Health Organization at the weekend. This is the highest level of alert intended to direct more resources globally to contain the epidemic and is the first such decision since the coronavirus began to sweep the world.
“Whatever more demand we encounter, we expect to meet it with our own resources,” Rolf Sass Sorensen, Bavarian’s head of investor relations, said by phone. “One very easy solution is to run our production facilities at night and have more people work in shifts.”
The Danish vaccine maker can produce 30 million doses a year and has so far not turned down any orders from governments seeking to protect their populations. Sorensen said the drug company is now working longer hours and night shifts and other adjustments will push production to more than 30 million, but declined to provide a specific figure.
Bavarian said earlier Monday that its Imvanex vaccine now has approval to be labeled for monkeypox and another disease caused by the vaccinia virus in Europe. The label extension follows similar approvals in Canada and the US. Shares rose as much as 10% in early trading in Copenhagen and jumped more than 150% after the breakout.
The WHO decision “raises the prospect of additional government orders for Imvanex, the only vaccine currently available,” Peter Werdult, an analyst at Citigroup, wrote in a note. He estimated that at least 50% of Bavarian’s production capacity could be allocated to the shot and said that Bavarian could get an average of about $100 per dose.
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Bavarian has the option of contracting with other manufacturers to produce the vaccine, but that would “take a long time and be expensive, so we’re trying to avoid that,” Sorensen said. He also said it was highly unlikely that governments would issue compulsory licenses to allow other manufacturers to produce the vaccine through their own channels.
“The product is not something that can be easily copied, so it is very unlikely that anyone but us will be able to quickly scale up production of the vaccine,” he said. “This is not a standard type of product that can be copied; you need a lot of experience to make the vaccine work. I’d say it’s an art form.
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