After declarations from the World Health Organization and the U.S. government that monkeypox is a public health emergency, attention is turning to the pharma industry’s response to the disease. Vaccines look likely to play a crucial role in controlling monkeypox – but could antivirals play a significant part as they did in the COVID-19 pandemic?
Now that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has declared monkeypox a public health emergency, nearly two weeks after a similar declaration from the World Health Organization, the way is cleared for a coordinated response and emergency use authorizations to address supply challenges that could limit the availability of currently approved vaccines. It also has several companies ready to leap into the fray if their preclinical studies show a path to approval. HHS said it just shipped more than 602,000 doses of the Jynneos vaccine to states and jurisdictions, an increase of 266,000 in the past week.
Joining a growing number of diagnostics companies mobilizing to minimize the spread of monkeypox, Novacyt SA and Seegene Inc. reported they have developed new polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assays to quickly diagnose the disease this week. Roche Holding AG released three monkeypox tests for research use in late May. Abbott Laboratories and Becton Dickinson & Co. have similar plans. Stanford Medicine made its own diagnostic available to its patients last week.
The COVID-19 pandemic completely rewrote the script for government responses to communicable diseases, and thus the Biden administration is wasting no time reacting to the emergence of the monkeypox virus. The administration announced June 28 that it has developed a plan to allocate the distribution of large volumes of vaccines, but the CDC has shipped tests to five major commercial lab companies, thus putting the U.S. on a strong footing to respond to the outbreak.
Shares in Bavarian Nordic A/S jumped after the company received an order of its monkeypox vaccine from an “undisclosed European country.” The order comes amid a small but growing number of cases of monkeypox in Europe, with nine reported in the U.K. and further cases in Portugal and Spain, bringing the total in the continent to more than 20.
