FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The CEO of Roche said he has been informed that more cases of mpox infection have occurred in Europe than previously reported and that the Swiss group could quickly offer 10 times more test kits than are currently in demand.
"It seems like there are more mpox cases already in Europe, maybe not all of them are in the media yet," CEO Thomas Schinecker said on a call after the drugs and diagnostics company reported quarterly sales on Wednesday.
Schinecker pointed to the detection of the first case of the new mpox variant reported by Germany on Tuesday.
Germany's Robert Koch Institute for public health said on Tuesday that the risk to the wider population was low.
Schinecker said that demand for Roche's mpox test kits was "not so high yet, but we could manage 10 times higher demand".
In the event of a pandemic situation with a much faster spread of the virus, Roche would require six to nine months to boost diagnostic production further, the CEO added.
The World Health Organization in August declared the new form of the virus a global health emergency after an outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo spread to neighbouring countries.
The first sign of the spread outside of Africa was on Aug. 15, when global health officials confirmed an infection with a new strain of the mpox virus in Sweden.
(Reporting by Ludwig Burger; Editing by Rachel More and David Goodman)