Coronavirus a real threat to the global drug supply

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The frightening speed with which the coronavirus appears to be spreading, and the Chinese authorities’ response to it, is having a predictable impact on transport systems – we have seen it before during similar events, but what is more profoundly disturbing is that there appears to be very little ability to accurately assess just vulnerable the rest of the world is to the disruptions. In the case of critical medicines, naturally, this is rather unsettling, as this report in Wired illustrates: “The biggest problem is that there is no publicly available information on what portion of which critical medicines originate in China, and specifically where those factories are located. Pharmaceutical companies consider such information to be proprietary.

“China has 15% of the world’s facilities that manufacture active pharmaceutical ingredients for 370 essential drugs, while the US has 21% of those facilities, according to the FDA. But the agency doesn’t know how much those facilities produce—if they produce anything at all.”

And given China’s central place in global supply chains, this is a story that could well be repeated across a whole range of verticals.