Swiss pharmaceutical firm Novartis has rowed back on earlier predictions that a drug to combat coronavirus could be on the horizon. CEO Vas Narasimhan says it is now more “realistic” to expect the pandemic to continue to haunt the world well into next year.
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“Cura para Covid está mais longe do que se esperava”
Speaking to the Neue Zürcher Zeitung newspaper on Monday, Narasimhan said Covid-19 is posing more problems than expected with a series of waves striking various countries.
“The question is: When will we be so far advanced with vaccines and treatments that the world can live with the virus? We are not assuming that it will suddenly go away or that enough people will be immune,” he said.
“We are at a very early stage and it turns out that it is taking longer than we expected,” he said of finding a cure. “We hoped to be able to get more out of the existing drugs for combating Covid and also to be faster in developing a new active ingredient. Now it is clear that we need more cooperation with biotech companies.”
Novartis sold off most of its vaccines unit in 2015 and Narasimhan admitted it would be “incredibly difficult” to re-build this competence from scratch in a short period of time.
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