US pharmaceutical company Regeneron on Monday, 26 October, announced the extension of an agreement with a United States health authority for the additional supply of its Ebola treatment, as the disease outbreak continues to spread across Africa.

According to Reuters, the new agreement — concluded with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) — expands a contract originally signed in 2020 and provides for the supply of doses of the drug Inmazeb through to 2031, at an approximate value of $270 million.

Inmazeb was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2020 for the treatment of infections caused by the Zaire ebolavirus.

However, the current outbreak is caused by the Bundibugyo variant, for which there is no approved specific antiviral treatment or licensed vaccine.

Regeneron said it is testing its experimental therapy maftivimab as a potential treatment against the Bundibugyo variant of the virus.

The outbreak, initially identified in May in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), has spread to four countries across Eastern, Central, and Western Africa, representing, according to information released, the widest geographical spread of an Ebola outbreak ever recorded on the continent.

In the DRC, the epidemic has caused nearly ten thousand infection cases and more than 4,800 deaths.

Ebola can cause fever, vomiting, and diarrhoea and, in the most severe cases, internal and external haemorrhaging.