Shares of Danish drugmaker Bavarian Nordic, which makes an mpox vaccine, rose sharply on Thursday after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the mpox outbreak in Africa a global public health emergency.
Alarmed by the rising number of cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the spread of the disease to neighbouring countries, the WHO has urgently convened a meeting of experts to study the outbreak and on Wednesday declared that “the situation constitutes a public health emergency of international concern.”
Shares in Bavarian Nordic, whose vaccine to prevent MPCS has been licensed since 2019, were up more than eight percent on the Copenhagen Stock Exchange by midday on Thursday.
This came as the stock price rose 12 percent on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, the African Union's health agency Africa CDC announced that more than 200,000 doses of the Danish drugmaker's vaccine would be sent to Africa under an agreement with the European Union (EU) and Bavarian Nordic.
Since January 2022, a total of 38,465 cases of the disease, formerly known as monkeypox, have been reported in 16 African countries, of which 1,456 have been fatal.
The number of cases this year has risen 160 percent from the previous year, according to data released last week by the health agency.
Bavarian Nordic primarily supplies its mpox vaccine (called Jynneos in the US and Imvanex in the European Union) to governments and international organisations, but began selling it on the US market in April.