DRC receives first donation of 100,000 mpox vaccines to contain outbreak
The first donation of MPOX vaccines arrived in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Thursday, but authorities say millions more doses are needed.
The announcement came after warnings that the virus, previously known as monkeypox, was spreading and urgent action was needed across the continent to contain the outbreak.
Nearly 100,000 doses of the Bavarian Nordic vaccine were delivered to the capital of the DRCKinshasa, as part of a European Union donation program. Another 100,000 people are expected on Saturday.
Dr Jean Kaseya, Director General of the regional health authority, Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), stressed the need to contain the spread of the disease to neighbouring countries.
“The outbreak is really moving (fast),” Kaseya said. “We really need to stop it very quickly.”
Nearly 25,000 cases of mpox have been reported across Africa this year, with 5,549 confirmed by testing and 643 deaths, according to Africa CDC. The number of cases is up 104% from last year.
The DRC still accounts for the majority of cases, but Kaseya said numbers were rising elsewhere. He said he was “really concerned” about a reported case of mpox in a seven-year-old child in Guinea, which may be the first case of the new clade Ib variant detected in West Africa. Sequence testing is still ongoing.
Clade Ib is a mutated form of the virus that was recently discovered in eastern Congo. It appears that the virus is spreading through close contact between people and is the cause of the large increase in cases.
The outbreak, which has spread to nearby countries, has been declared a public health emergency by both the World Health Organization (WHO) and African health officials, with a response plan estimated to cost nearly $600 million (£455 million) over the next six months, officials said.
According to Africa CDC, around 380,000 doses of the MPOX vaccine have been pledged by Western partners including the EU and the US. However, they said 3 million doses would be needed to stop outbreaks of the virus in the country.
Vaccination programs are expected to target contacts of suspected cases, as well as healthcare workers and frontline workers in areas where the infection is active.
However, the program is not likely to start until October, as local health and logistics workers are still being trained in storing and administering the vaccine. A major public information campaign is also being rolled out to raise awareness of mpox and address vaccine hesitancy.
Most cases in the DRC are among children. Regulators are reviewing information submitted by Bavarian Nordic, which suggests the vaccine could be approved for 12- to 17-year-olds by the end of the month, but that approval for younger children will take longer.
There are concerns about the affordability of vaccines for a broader programme, with WHO estimating the cost at 100%. $50 to $75 per dose.
“Most vaccines cost around £1 or less,” said Dr Andrew Hill from the University of Liverpool. “If there are large orders for millions of vaccine doses for Africa, Bavarian Nordic would have to lower their prices. Otherwise they would have to get a generic company to mass-produce their vaccine at a low price.”
A spokesperson for Bavarian Nordic said: “While we are proud that our mpox vaccine has arrived to help people in Africa, it remains a concern for Bavarian Nordic that artificial prices are being quoted, as there is no published dose price range. And we have not yet started discussing prices with relevant organisations.”
The company had previously indicated that it was open to a tiered pricing model, with countries with fewer resources or those that can place larger, long-term orders paying less.
Within the DRC, clade Ib was reported for the first time this week in Kinshasa. In a case report One patient, Dr. Eddy Lusamaki of the DRC’s National Institute of Biomedical Research, wrote that it indicated the variant was spreading through the country.
Lusamaki said: “The presence in Kinshasa, the capital, with multiple international air connections and multiple exchanges with Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo, illustrated the need for enhanced surveillance strategies to control the spread of the disease.”
Last month, cases of the clade Ib variant were also reported in Thailand and Sweden.