Call it callous. Call it macabre. To most of us, pandemics are human tragedies, like wars or natural disasters. 

But there are some investors who see these events through opportunistic eyes. 

The outbreak of mpox in Africa is a case in point. Shares shot up in pharma and biotech companies thought likely to benefit from the demand for vaccines and diagnostic kits. 

It was a similar scenario during the Covid pandemic. Traders are placing bets on what the World Health Organisation (WHO) described as a ‘public health emergency of inter­national concern’. 

Some will see this as making money out of misery and find the idea distasteful. 

Others will argue it is a case of capital being channelled into worthy endeavours carried out by these companies, that will save lives. 

Regardless of the morality, investors should proceed with caution: investing in companies whose shares have surged due to mpox is a risky proposition. 

At this stage, it is not clear how serious the situation will become and therefore what the scale of demand for vaccines and tests might be. 

The World Health Organisation says the virus has the potential to spread from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and other countries in Africa across that continent and beyond. 

The European Union expects more cases after Sweden reported its first last Thursday. 

Several companies caught up in mpox share mania are listed overseas. Small savers can buy and sell through an investment platform. 

They should be aware, however, that this carries currency as well as investment risk. 

Anyone considering a leap onto the bandwagon should be aware shares in this area are volatile, prone to vertiginous rises and falls. 

Risks include regulatory approval for tests and vaccines, which is tough to obtain. Even where this is granted, companies might still struggle to make a profit from the situation. 

That might sound counterintuitive. Pharma companies, however, are locked in a perennial conflict between maximising profit on the one hand – and on the other, making vaccines and medicines available for the good of humanity. 

The mpox outbreak is, so far, concentrated in poor nations. This means the pressure is on providers to offer vaccines free, or at a low cost. 

As Dr Jean Kaseya, director general of public health body Africa CDC, said last week: ‘The vaccine is so expensive – we can put it around $100 per dose. There are not so many countries in Africa that can afford the cost.’ 

Providing a vaccine for a virus like mpox may, however, have non-financial benefits. 

AstraZeneca did not seek to line its coffers with its Covid jab but basked in a halo effect nonetheless. 

It has just become one of the few UK companies whose stock market value has surpassed £200billion. 

But there are other risks, including that of large legal actions against a company if things go wrong.

Rapid share price rises in scenarios like these are often fuelled by City traders trying to make a quick turn. 

The standard advice for individual investors is not to be swayed by short-term market fads and to take a long-term view. 

One good question to ask yourself is whether you would consider investing in one of these companies if it hadn’t been caught up in the mpox buying frenzy. 

Here, we are not making investment recommendations, but taking a look at the businesses beneath the hype.

Bavarian Nordic

Much of the mpox market mania has centred around this Danish company. Its shares are up more than 90 per cent over the past year and rose nearly 40 per cent in the past five days. 

Denmark, which is also home t o N o v o Nordisk, the maker of Ozempic and Wegovy, is developing a reputation in life sciences. 

Bavarian Nordic’s boss, Paul Chaplin, happens to be a Brit. 

He said on Saturday that he is working with the WHO and Africa CDC to ensure ‘equitable access’ to its vaccine. 

That can be read as a clear signal he is not seeking to wring out maximum profits. 

He added that he is seeking approval to use its jab for adolescents, who, along with children, those with weakened immune systems and pregnant women, are thought to be particularly at risk. 

The 32-year-old company, which will announce its first-half results this week, has the advantage of having the only mpox vaccine with approval in the US and Europe. 

It supplied more than 15m doses in an earlier outbreak in 2022 of a different strain of mpox. 

So it has a proven track record, though investor gains from the previous mpox episode were not sustained. 

Its shares rose dramatically in 2022 only to drop sharply back. 

Even after their latest climb they are still below the height they reached two summers ago. 

Bavarian Nordic is valued on the Copenhagen stock market at 22billion Danish krone or around £2.5billion. 

As well as its mpox vaccine, it has others including ones for tick-borne encephalitis, rabies, cholera and typhoid. 

Novacyt 

Quoted on the junior AIM market in London as well as in Paris, Novacyt is a familiar name to UK small investors. 

Many private shareholders followed the spectacular rise and subsequent fall in its shares during the Covid pandemic. 

Its focus is on testing for viruses and its shares have rocketed rocketed more than 45 per cent on Friday to 96p, on hopes it could supply diagnostic tests for mpox. It was up another 23 per cent yesterday. 

But as investors who followed its fortunes in the pandemic and the aftermath will know, Novacyt shares are nothing if not volatile. 

They were listed on AIM in 2017 at 59p. At the beginning of 2020, before Covid struck, they were trading at around 13p. 

Pandemic buying sent them on an incredible upward journey to a peak of just under £12.80 in October of that year. 

Novacyt’s status as a City darling was shortlived, as it fell into a legal row with the Government over its tests. Earlier this summer it agreed to pay £5million as part of a settlement. 

Emergent Biosolution 

This company’s mission is to ‘defend people from things we hope will never happen,’ including biological warfare, drug overdoses and lethal viruses. 

The 25-year-old US business makes Narcan nasal spray, used to reverse opioid overdoses, and treatments for anthrax and botulism. 

But of most interest to the traders who sent shares up 55 per cent on the New York market last week – and another 15 per cent yesterday – is a product rejoicing in the name of ACAM2000. 

It is a smallpox vaccination Emergent bought from Sanofi, the French drugs giant, in 2017. 

That may have seemed a quixotic purchase, given that the WHO declared smallpox to have been eradicated in May 1980 – making it the only infectious disease to have been stamped out. 

The smallpox vaccine in Europe was introduced as early as 1721, when Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, a pioneering scientist and feminist, inoculated her three-year-old daughter with a tiny dose of the disease. 

So why such overwhelming interest more than 300 years later in a jab to protect against a disease we have defeated? You guessed it: smallpox is related to mpox. 

Emergent is hoping for approval from drugs regulators to use the smallpox vaccine to combat that ailment. 

It submitted an application to the US Food and Drug Administration in November last year.