Who would believe that just 4 months ago the majority of us were on a vacation in some exotic island, or having dinner with our families and beloved once, in what thought to be another ordinary new year representing a new decade. Unfortunately, no one could foresee the brutal pandemic we are facing. The biotech world was racing to find a cure for Cancer, orphan diseases and gene therapy, all that was driven by the monetary engine that was motivated science to the area they believed will be the most rewarding. Most or shall I say 95% of the greatest mind in the world wasn’t focusing their attention on finding a new cure or vaccines for a potential viral infection that might loom on humanity. I believe the world won’t stay the same, and a lot of our day to day habits will be taken in more precaution. I strongly believe that hygiene and protective care will be embraced and used by every household. The landscape of the biotech sphere will change and are already changing, to address viral diseases. The previous Ebola outbreak wasn’t hitting waves in the western world since it was clustered manly in African. Covid-19 is now covering the whole world with the most infected area, (true to the written of this article) is the US. Covid-19 has a global impact on health and social life. Elderly people that can’t have company, socialism that was completely band and the freedom to even walk freely outside your house were prohibited to inhibit the virus spread. 

The pharmaceutical sphere is transforming and adapting to the situation. The world race of arming with vital Covid-19 drugs is getting brutal by the day. More and more countries are closing physically their borders, and especially band the export of essential drugs. UK, India and many more countries published a list of drugs abend from export, including Lopi/Rito, Hydroxychloroquine, essential antibiotic, antiviral, anti-fungal, inflammatory and critical care drugs. Today more than ever countries need to rely on their local production. The problem is the supply chain is being scrutinized from bottom up, with disruption in the API supply that drys the manufacturing lines. China is the biggest API producer in the world covering about 75% of the world supply, India completes an additional 15% and the rest of the world holds the rest. As such most of the countries in the world are heavily rely on these two giants especially China, which was suffering from complete shutdown, and only now restoring slowly it’s production. Having a disruption in the supply chain combined with hiking demand creating huge shortages, mix that with countries that band export of essential products and horrendous logistic challenges (e.g., flight cancelation, inland transportation limitation, quarantine to the flight crew) and you will get the perfect storm.

My prediction is that we will see volumes going down for more high-end drugs and a spike in the consumption of the above-mentioned essential drugs. Government globally need to adapt to the new reality and going into an aggressive defense strategy, where the most important factor right now is assuring the infrastructure of supportive care (e.g., essential drugs stock, protective care, ventilation machines, securing the health of the medical staff and preparing more equipped hospital beds and large scale testing ). Flatten the infection ratio, to prevent the malfunction of supportive care units as a result of massive patient loads is another important goal. As such one can expect pneumonia and other inflammatory and anti-retroviral drugs to take the lead. I won’t be surprised if I would see a prevention measurement taken by the government by using some of the retroviral drugs as oseltamivir and others to somehow relieve the severity of the disease on a certain population (e.g., elderly, healthcare teams, police, and str.).

When we will see the end? Unfortunately, it will take at least a year or more to have a stable vaccine that could be furnished on a massive scale, until then, we all need to raise our discipline level and be sound to the health authorities request with no conditions. I truly hope that countries will be more open to mutual solidarity and collaboration rather than shrinking and retaliate in somehow panic selfish move. We can beat this virus if all the nations of the world will work together in an agile and transparent manner for the sake of humanity.