MOSCOW, August 21. /TASS/. A vaccine against mpox, previously known as monkeypox, developed by scientists from Russia’s Gamaleya National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology, should provide lifelong immunity to the disease, the center’s director, Alexander Gintsburg, said.

"The immunity that emerges should last a lifetime, I think, if the vaccine was made correctly and on a good carrier, such as a genetically engineered adenovirus without any antigenic drift in the pathogen that we detect, for example, flu or COVID-19. Although, certainly, it must be tested," he told TASS, replying to a question about booster shots of the mpox vaccine.

Earlier, Izvestia reported that the Gamaleya Center had completed developing a new safe vaccine against mpox. Now the developers need financing for pre-clinical and clinical trials which may take about a year.

About virus

Mpox is a rare viral disease which is endemic to remote regions near tropical forests of Central and Western Africa. The first case of the animal-to-human transmission of this disease was recorded in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1970. According to the WHO, this virus is usually transmitted to humans by wild animals, such as rodents and primates, while its secondary spread among humans is limited. Usually the lethality coefficient during mpox outbreaks ranges from 1% to 10% with the majority of fatalities in the younger age groups.

Earlier, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared mpox a public health emergency of international concern.