The world's only pharmaceutical company with an approved monkeypox vaccine said it can't match the current demand and may move to outsourcing production, Bloomberg reported Aug. 17.
So far, Bavarian Nordic has already sold millions of doses, with the U.S. snatching up about 7 million, and an undisclosed European country buying 1.5 million doses.
Since the current outbreak sprung up in mid-May, Bavarian Nordic has published updates about orders for its monkeypox vaccine every few days, but it has been silent since Aug. 3 when it said an "undisclosed" country in the Asia-Pacific region bought 350,000 doses.
"We're looking at ways to get help from partners in all the various production steps of the vaccine," Rolf Sass Sorensen, a vice president at Bavarian Nordic, told Bloomberg. "We are also investigating a tech transfer to a contract manufacturer in the U.S. to increase capacity. We don't have any concrete negotiations in the works with bulk producers, but we're investigating and looking at what options there are."
Until now, Bavarian Nordic has said it can keep up with demand and wasn't planning on outsourcing production.
The Danish-based company previously said it was considering running production 24/7 after the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a global emergency at the end of July, but no decision has been announced yet. Its "finish and fill" facility in Denmark was approved July 28 after the FDA hurried the inspection process, but Bavarian isn't running at full speed because another manufacturing facility has been under construction since August 2021.
CDC data reports more than 12,000 monkeypox cases in the U.S. and 38,019 global monkeypox cases.