End of Covid emergency to affect sales of diagnostics cos: GlobalData report

With the World Health Organisation (WHO) declaring that Covid-19 is no longer a global emergency, medical device companies are likely to see a decrease in sales, according to a report on Tuesday.

In the last three years of the pandemic, many medical device companies made billions through tests and pharmaceuticals.

The report by data and analytics company GlobalData predicts that in the coming years, fewer new Covid-19 tests will be hitting the market; instead, existing tests will be improved. This could mean improving tests' specificity and sensitivity and creating multiparameter tests with existing technology.

"Companies have reported decreasing sales of Covid-19 related products for the past two quarters. Therefore, having the Covid-19 pandemic declared over and instead an endemic virus, and with the emergency use authorisations on Covid-19 tests lifted, in vitro diagnostics (IVD) companies are scrambling to minimise their losses," said Selena Yu, Medical Analyst at GlobalData, in a statement.

In vitro diagnostics (IVD) are tests done on samples such as blood or tissue that have been taken from the human body.

Currently, there are 132 active clinical trials, out of 310 trials on infectious disease IVD devices, developing Covid-19 tests.

In January 2023, many companies involved in Covid-19 tests, like Danaher, Abbott, Labcorp, and Becton, Dickinson and Company, also known as BD, made statements on their significant drops in Covid-19 tests.

"Now that the pandemic has been announced to no longer be an emergency, the drops will become more significant in the coming months. There could be peak sales in the fall and winter seasons as the respiratory disease season starts up again," Yu said.

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