Coronavirus, because the three largest vaccine manufacturers have failed

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The history of vaccines against Coronavirus, at least in this first phase, is studded with a fairly worrying scarcity of doses, which raises great questions about the possibility of concluding a mass vaccination campaign in a more or less short time. But if the supply is so fragile, in front of a clearly huge demand, there is a very specific reason. Zain Rizvi, a researcher who deals with access to drugs explains this well to the Financial Times: the pharmaceutical giants, those that historically produce large quantities of vaccines around the world, are behind schedule. In the race for the Coronavirus vaccine, they have been beaten by biotechnology companies such as Moderna and BioNTech. And this has had a major impact on the amount of readily available doses.

The three largest vaccine manufacturers in the world are GlaxoSmithKline, Merck and Sanofi. New Jersey-based Merck recently decided to completely abandon its vaccine development program, while France’s Sanofi and Britain’s GSK have to redo a trial phase after a dosing mistake. “The failure of three of the largest vaccine manufacturers in the world to take a crisis seriously and respond with a direct response – Rizvi told the Financial Times – is indicative of the biggest failure in the industry’s business model to prioritize. to the needs of public health “.

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How the vaccine market is changing

These three companies, along with Pfizer, dominated the vaccine market in 2020, with those for influenza, pneumonia, HPV and shingles. In the same year, as soon as the pandemic broke out, they invested in research to produce a vaccine against Covid-19. But at the moment only Pfizer has succeeded, and it has done so thanks to the partnership with the German BioNTech which – like Moderna and Novavax – is not a big player in the pharmaceutical world, but a company that deals with biotechnology. This was the keystone. And it seems a kind of revenge of those that until recently were startups, against the giants of Big Pharma.

Pfizer, thanks to BioNTech, has managed not to miss the train of the most important vaccine of recent years. And this year, according to Airfinity, it will triple its vaccines revenue. While sales of the Novavax and Moderna will exceed those of Merck, GSK and Sanofi. Even cheaper ones from AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson (close to approval) will generate more vaccine sales in 2021 than did Merck, GSK and Sanofi in 2020.

And this big change has a major effect on the stock market as well. Since the beginning of 2020, Novavax has grown by over 6,400%, Moderna by over 850% and BioNTech by over 190%. Shares of GSK, Merck and Sanofi, on the other hand, lost between 13 and 30%.