9 Trends Of New Post-Covid Era

As the world wakes up to the new post-COVID reality, the vaccine industry is entering a new paradigm that is one in which vaccines are perceived as effective medical interventions, which will have wider acceptance in the society, and which need to be supported.

- Dr K V Balasubramaniam

The global vaccine industry has hit pay dirt, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic! Never has it been so good for the industry.

The scramble to find medical solutions to one of the worst nightmares that haunts humanity has found a forceful response from the vaccine industry. We now have vaccines which promise protection against this horrible pandemic. The world is now more positive about the post pandemic future albeit with new social norms.

Once perceived to be cheap with production in the ambit of government institutes, and largely ignored by the pharmaceutical majors, vaccines are now perceived to be of immense social value and new business growth drivers in the pharmaceutical industry.

The defining changes came about at the beginning of this century with the United Nations adopting the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) in 2000 of reducing child mortality by half by 2015. Impetus to this was given by the creation of Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) in 2000 to fund immunization initiatives in low-income countries, and more importantly develop low-cost vaccine solutions alongside new vaccine technologies. This apart, new recombinant biotechnology methods were able to address vaccine solutions to pressing infectious disease needs.

The private sector seized the initiatives and blockbuster vaccines soon hit the market. For example, the pneumococcal vaccine market is now worth $8 billion, the human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine is worth $3.8 billion, and the rotavirus vaccine is worth $1.6 billion. No longer are vaccines in the ambit of government institutes. No longer are they perceived as cheap. No longer are they low in the priority list of pharmaceutical majors.