Post COVID-19, The Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Will Further Shift From A Global To A Regional Model

By Dr Andreas Meudt, Global Head of API Contract Manufacturing at Evonik

The global pharmaceutical supply chain has proven to be remarkably resilient to the manufacturing and logistical disruptions triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. In most cases, stakeholders across the pharmaceutical supply chain have successfully been able to pivot to ensure that the supply of essential medicines can continue. However, despite this success, the pandemic has served to highlight potential vulnerabilities in the global pharmaceutical supply chain that may be triggered by future logistical or political disruptions. Industry, government and regulatory stakeholders across the world now consider the local production and supply of pharmaceutical products to be a matter of national or regional security  To reduce risk, initial steps are now being taken to review how local production capacities can be increased and potential supply chain gaps can be tightened.