The stupidity that lead to Remdisivir shortage
Pharma industries reduced the production of the Remdisivir from January till March, due to low demand and to ensure that the prices don’t fall below a certain point.
The sudden rise in the cases of coronavirus has uncovered many crevices in the pharmaceutical sector. The tally of covid infections is crossing 150k mark daily. Remdivisir, a powerful antivirus drug that is being used to fight against the infection is in shortage. This lead to complication as doctors are rushing to find the alternate drug.
“Manufacturers can’t take risk of being saddled with huge inventories as Remdivisir has a short shelf-life of six to eight months,” said a Pharma industry source. This confirms the notion that the industry was churning profit during the pandemic and was not concentrated on the maintenance of the supply of a life-saving drug.
“In the first wave, the impact of Covid and demand of Remdesivir was restricted to only the metros and Tier-1 cities. But in this second wave, there is a surge in cases even in Tier-2,3 and 4 cities and town due to which the distribution network is struggling to keep pace with the demand and stocks of Remdesivir have been spread thin,” anonymous official of a Pharma company.
“It is not a question of just shortage. The surge in the second wave has been so rapid that it has resulted in mismatch in the production curve and the demand curve,” anonymous official of Pharma company.
The good news is every company has ramped up production, and the crisis will be just concentrated on the logistics. Hopefully, it will be solved in the coming week.
The companies that manufacture the medicine are Zydus Cadila, Dr Reddy’s laboratories, Hetero Drugs, Jubilant Life Sciences, Cipla Ltd and Biocon Group’s Syngene. Their combined capacity to produce the Remdesivir is 4 million per month.
