The pharmaceutical industry has a love-hate relationship with the general public. Not many people understand how expensive and time-consuming it is to develop drugs that will ultimately go on to save lives. This is why sometimes the prices that are set for the drugs, are seen as extortionate. However, the more we realize that big pharma is just a sector of the economy that plays a critical role in our quality of life, the sooner we become to tolerate it’s sometimes annoying traits. But lately, we are finding that pharma is a force for good as companies race ahead of each other to make a vaccine for the novel Coronavirus.
Technology boost
As in wartime, technology development during a global emergency has accelerated to blistering speeds. Digital track and trace technology is rapidly advancing and it has to, in order for the economy to wake up again. Businesses are being allowed to make apps that use government data, which helps everyone to know where the virus is spreading and how many employees can come back to work safely. Germany’s Corona-Warn-App and Britain’s NHS App are allowing businesses to report rises or declines in their worker’s cases of COVID-19. This has allowed governments to move from national lockdowns to city-wide lockdowns instead. With more businesses using this type of technology, they can let citizens know of the app, where to find it, how to use it and report back to them with their results. Pharma companies use the data to improve the apps and testing kits
Practical needs
Just as you would have thought, the need for practical equipment such as RFID medical fridges has grown rapidly too. These fridges can come in freestanding designs, under bench of ultra-large designs too. They are used to store vital vaccines that are in development, as they can provide the kind of temperature and atmosphere required to kill bacteria but keep the vaccine alive. Businesses are also requiring more laboratories which provide the space needed to do trial testing on patients. Hospitals have been full for a long time but they are slowly beginning to cope, despite over 200,000 deaths in the USA alone. More protective equipment for doctors and nurses is being made by pharma companies, which is helping healthcare professionals stay on the frontline for longer periods of time.
In the running
So who is in the running to develop the vaccine first? We shouldn’t see it as a race against each other, but a race against time. AstraZeneca is working with scientists from Cambridge, England, to develop a vaccine and is in second-stage trialing at the moment. Pfizer is being touted to be ahead of the competition in America and is developing the vaccine with the hopes to distribute it across the country, firstly in the most-affected areas like New York.
Big pharma is an often misunderstood sector of the economy, but after the president signed an executive order to balance out the prices of drugs for US citizens, maybe things could change.
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