The share prices of a number of healthcare and pharmaceutical companies worldwide rose on Friday as the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared a rapidly-spreading African Mpox outbreak a public health emergency.
ADVERTISEMENTSeveral pharmaceutical companies have seen their shares rise in anticipation of increased demand for Mpox vaccines.
They include include Bavarian Nordic, a vaccine manufacturer based in Denmark, whose Mpox vaccine, JYNNEOS, also known by the brand names Imvanes and IMvamune, has already been approved. The company's shares jumped about 17.6% on Friday morning.
JYNNEOS is one of the only two Mpox vaccines approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and is also recommended by the WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunisation (SAGE).
The company recently revealed that it has approximately 300,000 doses of the vaccine ready for shipment, with the capacity to produce about 10 million vaccine doses for African countries by the end of next year.
Shares in Chinese virus detection kit manufacturer Shanghai ZJ Bio-Tech also jumped 7.91% on Friday, while shares in Japanese medical tools supplier, Precision System Science, rose 5.28%.
Other pharma companies seeing share price support
Other pharma companies were slightly boosted by the trend despite not having any Mpox vaccines available at the moment. AstraZeneca's shares rose 1.36% on Thursday by market close. Novo Nordisk's shares also inched up 2.34%.
Healthcare stocks have already been seeing increased attention in the last few weeks, especially in Asia, as COVID-19 cases increased again in several countries, impacting Olympic athletes at the Paris Olympics.
In a statement on the WHO website, Professor Dimie Ogoina, said: “The current upsurge of Mpox in parts of Africa, along with the spread of a new sexually transmissable strain of the monkeypox virus, is an emergency, not only for Africa, but for the entire globe.
“Mpox, originating in Africa, was neglected there, and later caused a global outbreak in 2022. It is time to act decisively to prevent history from repeating itself.”
The WHO Regional Director for Africa, Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, also said on the website: “Significant efforts are already underway in close collaboration with communities and government, with our country teams working on the frontlines to help reinforce measures to curb mpox.
“With the growing spread of the virus, we’re scaling up further through coordinated international action to support countries to bring the outbreaks to an end.”
What do we know about Mpox?
Mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, was first discovered in monkeys used in research in Denmark in 1958. The first reported human case of Mpox was a nine-month-old boy in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1970. In recent times, Mpox saw a global outbreak in 2022-2023.
Now, a new variant has emerged, causing cases of Mpox to spread to countries which did not formerly report cases of the virus, such as Uganda, Kenya, Burundi and Rwanda. The last time the WHO declared Mpox a public health emergency of international concern was back in May 2022.
However, at that time, the strain in question was much milder, which has led to increased concerns that the risks currently could be much greater with the new fast-spreading strain. The continuing rise in international travel seen post-pandemic is expected to contribute to cases spreading.
