2024-08-16 08:27:00
Danish pharmaceutical laboratory Bavarian Nordic, the maker of a vaccine against MPOX, announced on Friday that it had asked the European Medicines Agency to expand use of its serum to adolescents aged 12 to 17.
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“Interim results from clinical studies show that the immune response to poxvirus and smallpox vaccines in adolescents is not inferior and that the safety profile is similar to that in adults,” Bavarian Nordic wrote in a statement.
In the United States, during the last MPO outbreak in 2022, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted an emergency use authorization to the adolescent vaccine.
The current strong resurgence of the disease in Africa is largely due to a new strain of the virus, clade 1b, which is more contagious and more dangerous than previous strains.
The epidemic is spread in part through sexual relations, but the virus also spreads through non-sexual contact, also threatening children where the disease appears to be more dangerous.
On Thursday, Bavarian Nordic said it was ready to produce up to 10 million doses of the vaccine in 2025.
The lab currently has about 500,000 doses in stock.
On Thursday, Sweden detected its first case of the type 1 branch, the first outside the African continent.
The World Health Organization (WHO) subsequently warned that other imported cases of MPOX may soon be detected in Europe.
The day before, in the face of a resurgence of measles cases on the African continent, the World Health Organization launched the highest-level international alert.
Separately, Pakistan reported its first case on its soil on Friday.
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