The COVID-19 vaccine market has already generated billions

Vaccination of people against COVID-19 requires, among other things, considerable financial resources needed for research and development of vaccines in record time. Euler Hermes analysts estimate that $ 25 billion has already been invested in this direction by 2020 alone. In the number of people vaccinated per hundred inhabitants, Israel clearly leads the United Kingdom and the United States, which are far ahead of Italy, Germany or France.

Vaccines can change the whole industry

The oligopolistic vaccine market generated sales of about $ 35 billion in 2019, representing a three percent share of the $ 1.1 trillion global drug market. So far, the four main players in vaccine production have been GSK from the United Kingdom, Merck and Pfizer in the United States, and Sanofi in France, which usually share 80 percent of total vaccine revenue each year. In the long run, the success of previously unknown biotechnology manufacturers, especially Moderna and BioNtech, could significantly change the pharmaceutical industry as a whole, according to Euler Hermes. The mRNA technology used in the COVID-19 vaccine could also be a change for other therapeutic sectors, including the five-fold larger oncology market. "In the future, we could therefore see that at present, small biotechnology companies will absorb the world's largest players in the field of drug production," says Peter Mucina, CEO of Euler Hermes.