Short-cut to save lives: How pharma is changing to develop Covid-19 vaccine

Making medicines is expensive, and it can take a very long time to get from the discovery of a drug to actually treating patients

To bring Covid-19 under control a vaccine needs to be available to every nation, rich and poor – and it needs to happen quickly. But pharmaceutical breakthroughs are usually the result a slow process involving competition, secrecy, risky investments and extensive trials.

Changing any big industry to speed its processes up is going to be difficult. But there are signs that substantial changes are underway – and they may be here to stay.

Medical innovation is in fact often accelerated in a time of crisis. During the first world war, X-rays, developed two decades earlier, came into their own.