Following the announcement from the World Health Organization's director-general, Tedros Ghebreyesus, over the weekend that "the global monkeypox outbreak represents a public health emergency of international concern," stocks for developers of smallpox vaccines saw a resurrection on Monday as reports on cases of monkeypox continued to expand globally.
According to Barron's, Siga Technologies, Inovio Pharmaceuticals and other vaccine stocks saw a significant bump after Tedros on Saturday proclaimed that "we have an outbreak that has spread around the world rapidly, through new modes of transmission, about which we understand too little. I have decided that the global monkeypox outbreak represents a public-health emergency of international concern."
So far, roughly 16,000 cases of monkeypox have been reported in 75 countries, but with marked consideration of only five deaths, the WHO reports.
"There is also a clear risk of further international spread," Tedros said, "although the risk of interference with international traffic remains low for the moment." The director-general adds that the outbreak is concentrated among men who have sex with men.
Still, Anne Rimoin, a professor of epidemiology at UCLA, told Fox News that the virus could spread via "the lesions" that come "in contact with bedsheets, clothing," etc., as well as "person-to-person contact."
Of note, according to reporting by Natalie Winters with The National Pulse, just a few months before concerns about a monkeypox outbreak arose, Winters reported that researchers with the Wuhan Institute of Virology "assembled a monkeypox virus genome, allowing the virus to be identified through PCR tests, using a method researchers flagged for potentially creating a 'contagious pathogen.'" They published their study in February.
Nevertheless, news of the WHO stepping up its concerns about monkeypox has reignited gains in the company's manufacturing vaccines.
Bavarian Nordic, which makes a smallpox vaccine that has been approved in the United States for use against monkeypox, increased 4% in trading on the Copenhagen Stock Exchange.
Siga, the developer of an antiviral called TPOXX that is approved in the European Union for use against monkeypox, jumped 26% in U.S. premarket trading. Even though the drug has not been approved, the U.S. has still stockpiled it.
Emergent Biosolutions, which makes a smallpox vaccine that could be used as a prophylactic for monkeypox, shot up 11% in the premarket.
And Inovio, which holds no monkeypox-relevant product for sale or under development except for an experimental vaccine against smallpox and which offered protection only to nonhuman primates against monkeypox in a trial, gained 6% in the premarket.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.