Monkeypox: Vaccine demand soars, and just one small Danish company makes it

Bavarian Nordic The world’s only supplier of a licensed vaccine for monkeypox.

The World Health Organization has in recent days declared the disease a Public Health Emergency of Global Concern, the first time the organization has issued this designation because of the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Global cases of monkeypox have exceeded 18,000.

In the past few weeks, the company has scrambled to ramp up manufacturing. It has postponed manufacturing plans for other vaccines, and shuffled allocations so that it can make initial deliveries to as many countries as possible. Despite its efforts, worldwide supplies are still short, prompting health officials to provide only one shot of the two-dose vaccine.

“It was a bit like running on quicksand,” said WSJ chief executive Paul Chaplin.

The vaccine, called Geneos in the US, was not designed to fight monkeypox, a disease that was rarely seen outside parts of West and Central Africa until recently. Instead, it was developed, with funding from the US government, as a defense against a theoretical threat: the intentional or accidental reproduction of smallpox.

Before the global monkeypox outbreak, only six countries had ever placed an order for the genus. Mr. Chaplin said only two—the US and Canada—had built up meaningful reserves.

Since the outbreak of monkeypox, the company has raised its full-year financial outlook six times. Its full-year expected revenue has more than doubled to 2.7 billion to 2.9 billion Danish kroner, equivalent to about $380 million, and it now expects to nearly break even, estimating a loss of about 1.1 billion to 1.3 billion kroner. Is. The share price has nearly tripled since mid-May.

Smallpox is one of the deadliest diseases in human history, but it was eradicated four decades ago after a long-running vaccination campaign. Vials of live virus are still kept in high-security storage for research purposes, and technology exists to recreate it in the laboratory. The threat of its accidental or intentional reintroduction has prompted some governments to stock ready-to-use vaccines such as Genios that can fight it.

Older smallpox vaccines are available, but governments are using them only in rare circumstances because they can have serious side effects. Other vaccine makers are no closer to developing alternatives. Moderna Inc. said it was conducting early-stage research into potential monkeypox vaccines, but it would take years to develop a new shot from scratch under normal development timelines.

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