By Maggie Fick
LONDON (Reuters) -Danish biotech firm Bavarian Nordic could ramp up production of its mpox vaccine even before having orders lined up, based on the outcome of talks this week with the World Health Organisation, the company's CEO told Reuters on Tuesday.
Chief Executive Officer Paul Chaplin said in an interview that the company urgently needs to make the call on whether to manufacture "at risk" - or without signed contracts - because diverting or switching manufacturing capacity from its other vaccines to mpox will take time.
In order to make that decision, Bavarian Nordic "would need to be reasonably convinced that those orders would be coming through", Chaplin said. "We'll have to wait and see how the discussions develop this week and we'll make a decision later this week what we're doing."
He said the discussions were with the WHO, the global vaccine group Gavi, and the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and with individual governments in Africa and elsewhere.
Last week the WHO declared that an outbreak of mpox, a viral infection that spreads through close contact, represents a global health emergency for the second time in two years.
That announcement followed an outbreak of the viral infection in Democratic Republic of Congo that has spread to neighbouring countries.
Africa CDC said on Tuesday that talks had started with Bavarian Nordic about technology transfer to enable its mpox vaccine to be manufactured in Africa in the future.
Jean Kaseya, the CDC's director general, told a briefing that he would give a further update on the talks in the coming weeks.
"The discussions already started between Africa CDC team and Bavarian Nordic team and some African manufacturers," Kaseya told reporters.
"We need local manufacturing, and I want to recognise that and to thank Bavarian Nordic for accepting to do the tech transfer in Africa, for Africa to manufacture the vaccine," he said, adding that would help lower the price of the vaccine without compromising on its quality.
Chaplin, the Bavarian Nordic CEO, separately told Reuters earlier in the day that his company is "in dialogue" with the Africa CDC.
Shares in Bavarian Nordic - one of the few drug firms with an mpox vaccine - were up about 19% since market close on Aug. 13, the day before the WHO announcement.
On Saturday, the company said it has informed the Africa CDC that it could manufacture 10 million doses of the vaccine by the end of 2025, and could supply up to 2 million doses this year.
But the 2 million doses by year-end would not be possible unless Bavarian Nordic "changes gears" to start producing more of its mpox vaccine now, instead of its other vaccines, Chaplin said: "Every week we don't switch over, we lose some of that capacity."
(Reporting by Maggie Fick, Anait Miridzhanian and Alexander Winning; Editing by Kirsten Donovan and Ros Russell)
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