Pharma 2022 forecast: With omicron extending the pandemic, how will biopharma respond to COVID?

Well, thanks to omicron, here we are again, asking many of the same questions and with renewed anxiety about the future. At least now we know the drill. “I see COVID continuing to have new variants and coming back each season,” Cantor Fitzgerald’s Grace Chen told Fierce Pharma. We also know what questions to ask. Is omicron more contagious? Will vaccines and treatments be effective? Are we destined for a return of restrictions and lockdowns? And, after omicron, what’s next? Are we simply on a coronavirus hamster wheel, with many more variants yet to contend with? As the pharmaceutical industry approaches 2022, there is some comfort knowing that a blueprint is in place to respond to the pandemic—and one that will allow business to continue. But what about those best-laid plans based on the belief that the pandemic would transition into an endemic in 2022?