British health agencies have got $375,000 to develop tools for a systematic approach to testing the effectiveness of monkeypox vaccines.
The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, which allocated the funds, made the announcement on Tuesday, just days after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the virus a public health emergency of worldwide importance.
The designation, which is the highest level of alert given by the health body, does not necessarily imply that the disease is particularly transmissible or lethal. However, it is critical to release funds and foster international cooperation to share immunizations and treatments.
According to CEPI, the funds will go to the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) to develop standard tools for assessing the strength and duration of immune responses elicited by current vaccines, as well as tests used to detect monkeypox antibody levels.
Aside from administrative fees, these tools will be made freely available to the global scientific community, paving the way for a common standardized assessment of vaccine performance against monkeypox between countries, according to CEPI.
Until this year, the viral disease had only rarely spread outside of its endemic region of Africa. However, reports of a few cases in the United Kingdom in early May indicated that the outbreak had spread to Europe. There have been over 16,000 confirmed cases of monkeypox in over 75 countries so far.
Previous monkeypox outbreaks in Africa of the strain now spreading had a fatality rate of about 1%, but this outbreak appears to be less lethal in non-endemic countries, many of which have stronger healthcare infrastructures.
Scientists are trying to ascertain what caused the initial outbreak of cases and whether the virus has changed. Experts believe that increased global travel and climate change have accelerated the emergence and spread of viruses.
Many countries have offered monkeypox vaccines to high-risk individuals and those who have recently had close contact with an infected person.
Vaccines against monkeypox are already available in some countries, including the United States and Canada, thanks to the development and approval of a vaccine against the closely related smallpox. WHO reported that the first generation of smallpox vaccines were up to 85 percent effective in preventing monkeypox.
The main vaccine used to try to stop the outbreak is made by the Danish company Bavarian Nordic, while an older vaccine, currently made by Emergent Biosolutions, has seen limited uptake due to a severe side-effects warning.
“However, more data are needed to confirm the extent to which they provide sufficient protection in the human populations now encountering the current circulating strains of Monkeypox,” read a statement released by CEPI.
