US regulators have approved the first treatment for smallpox - a deadly disease that was wiped out four decades ago - in case the virus is used in a terror attack.
Smallpox, which is highly contagious, was eradicated worldwide by 1980 after a huge vaccination campaign.
But people born since then haven’t been vaccinated, and small samples of the smallpox virus were saved for research purposes, leaving the possibility it could be used as a biological weapon.
Maker SIGA Technologies of New York has already delivered two million treatments that will be stockpiled by the government, which partially paid for the development of the drug, called TPOXX.
To test the drug’s effectiveness, monkeys and rabbits were infected with a similar virus and then given the drug. More than 90 percent survived, the company said. It’s safety was tested in several hundred healthy volunteers, who were not infected with smallpox.