Novartis said in August that it plans to spin off its Sandoz generics unit to sharpen its focus on its proprietary prescription drugs.
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The chief executive of Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis warned on Thursday that the coronavirus pandemic is likely to enter an endemic phase and renewed calls for politicians to adequately fund pandemic preparedness.
“If you look at the last two years, we have populations that have built up immunity, you have a virus that continues to make changes, but I think what we’re going to settle into is more of an endemic environment in terms of coronaviruses and the virus specifically Covid,” Vas Narasimhan, CEO of Novartis, told CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
“This will mean that we will have sporadic outbreaks, we will have at-risk populations that need to continue to be vaccinated, but I would expect, as has been the case with other coronaviruses over the past centuries, that human populations will adapt and reach a kind of solution with this virus.”
Narasimhan, who has earlier warned that future pandemics are bound to happen, made it clear that world leaders must learn from the coronavirus crisis to be better placed for future pandemics.
“I think what’s really important now is to focus on pandemic preparedness for the future,” Narasimhan said.
“I’m not sure we’ve learned our lessons from the past that we need to invest in.” [research and development]we need to invest more in preparedness to be ready for the next pandemic – and I think that should be on the global agenda,” he added.
“Strained Credulity”
His comments came shortly after UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that the world’s failure to prepare for future pandemics was “strained credulity”.
Speaking at the WEF on Wednesday, Guterres said: “Somehow – after all we have endured – we have not learned the global public health lessons of the pandemic. We are totally unprepared for the coming pandemics.”
Last month, China abruptly ended most Covid-19 controls, leading to a spike in infections among its population of 1.4 billion.
Beijing said on Saturday that almost 60,000 people with Covid have died in hospital since the country lifted its strict Covid restrictions last month, a sharp increase from previous figures.
Asked if it made pharmacological sense for some governments to take a hard line on Chinese nationals entering their country after Beijing reopened, Narasimhan said: “I think from an epidemiological point of view you can certainly question it because at the end of the day, we’ve learned the hard way that these viruses will move independently, and they don’t really pay attention to national borders.”
“I continue to believe that open borders and open economies are the right solution for the global order,” he added.
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