Danish vaccine maker to supply 2 million additional doses in 2024

Bavarian Nordic, the Danish manufacturer of the vaccine against MPOX, formerly known as monkeypox, pledged on Thursday 12 September to supply an additional two million doses of its serum by the end of the year. These doses are expected to be “sufficient to meet expected demand in the short and medium term”according to the laboratory, but the Bavarian Nordic “continues to explore other levers that could further increase its capacity” of production.

Some 265,000 doses have arrived by plane in Kinshasa in recent days. These vaccines are to be deployed across the territory, four times the size of France, in preparation for a vaccination campaign that is due to begin next month. Democratic Republic of Congothe country by far the most affected in the world by the virus, has recorded 22,000 cases and 716 deaths linked to monkeypox since January, according to the latest figures from Congolese health authorities.

Several outbreaks of mpox are underway in central Africa. But the situation in Democratic Republic of Congo has become more complicated with the appearance of the variant called “clade 1b”the dangerousness and contagiousness of which are currently difficult to assess, according to several specialists.