Rostec’s smallpox vaccine could be improved to fight monkeypox

The Rostec vaccine against smallpox protects against monkeypox by 85%, said Vladimir Artyakov, deputy general director of the company. He said that Rostec intends to improve the vaccine if necessary.

“By the way, we produce vaccines against smallpox. We looked at the situation with monkeypox, our vaccine kills monkeypox by 85%. If a situation suddenly happens when monkeypox penetrates here, we will use this vaccine, but we will improve it further,” Artyakov said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 channel.

Earlier, the drug manufacturer Microgen, which is part of the Nacimbio holding of Rostec, announced its readiness to supply about 10 million doses of smallpox vaccine per year. If necessary, production can be increased several times.

Only one case of monkeypox has been reported in Russia, which was found in a resident of St. Petersburg who contracted it during a trip to Europe. August 3 he was discharged from the hospital. His contacts with the sick were established, no other cases of infection were found. Rospotrebnadzor said there was no need to introduce restrictive measures in Russia, as no more cases of the disease were found.

First received The approval of the vaccine in Europe is Imvanex by the Danish Bavarian Nordic. It used to be supplied to treat the common smallpox, but EU countries have decided to use it to treat an outbreak of monkeypox. USA at the end of July declaredthat the country may not have enough doses of Jynneos vaccine.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), at the beginning of August, 16,495 cases of monkeypox infection were reported in Europe, a total of 27,814 in the world. July The WHO has declared the monkeypox outbreak a public health emergency.

Lusine Balasyan