Covid-19: healthcare professionals are concerned about company operations
In a recent study, GlobalData has found that a staggering 95 per cent of healthcare professionals are concerned about the impact of Covid-19 on their companies
GlobalData’s latest annual report, titled Healthcare Industry Business Confidence Report 2020, found that a total 95 per cent of respondents surveyed between February and early March 2020 were concerned about the impact of Covid-19 on their companies’ performance, with respondents from the Asia Pacific (APAC) region expressing the highest level of concern. Furthermore, 23 per cent of respondents were very or extremely concerned about supply and demand gaps – possibly tied to the coronavirus outbreak.
While 20 per cent of those asked were ‘extremely concerned’, only five per cent of those asked were ‘not concerned at all’ by health epidemics on their company’s performance – in the same study conducted in 2019, 41 per cent of those asked were not concerned at all, and only five per cent were extremely concerned.
Urte Jakimaviciute, Senior Director of Market Research at GlobalData, noted that drug discovery and manufacturing has traditionally been a ‘global effort’, with China and India establishing themselves as the main players. However, much has changed since Wuhan experienced its surge in Covid-19 cases. “While most pharmaceutical factories in China resumed their production lines, the pharma industry’s concerns are heightened by countries such as India restricting the export of dozens of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and the medicines made from them, the UK banning the parallel export of more than 80 drugs to protect supplies during the coronavirus outbreak, and the US and the EU looking into bringing manufacturing back to their soils,” Jakimaviciute explained.
She continued: “With Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) downgrading it’s global growth forecast in the beginning of March, it is clear that the impact of the Covid-19 outbreak on economies is going to be severe. However, as the spread of the coronavirus continues, what will come in the aftermath of the Covid-19 outbreak is yet unknown. It may take years before the full global impact of the coronavirus is understood and measured.”