How will COVID-19 impact drug funding and reimbursement?

Eva Marchese, Abhishek Kumar and Kees Chamberlain from Charles River Associates examine how the COVID-19 pandemic is expected to impact payers’ management of pharmaceutical budgets in Europe in an Expert View column.

During the ongoing pandemic, the focus on quickly developing COVID-19 vaccines has led countries and global government bodies to make substantial investments in funding vaccine manufacturers and in forming advanced purchase agreements and procuring available supply.

In the UK, the cost of five vaccine procurement deals for up to 267 million doses was expected to be £2.9 billion ($4 billion). When adding costs for sponsoring research and development, distribution and administration, the total spend was about £11.7 billion1.