Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan: We will have to live with the virus for a long time

Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan does not foresee a breakthrough in the fight against the coronavirus in the near future. The world will have to live with the virus for a long time, he said in an interview published by the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. ‘There was a brief moment of hope last spring, according to Narasimhan. At the time it was thought that there would be a single wave of infections, but it is now clear that the pandemic will continue for this year and likely for much of the next’.

‘The question is when we will have the vaccine and the treatments that will allow the world to live with the virus’ says the head of the pharmaceutical group in Basel. ‘We don’t expect the virus to disappear suddenly or for enough people to be immunised’.

Narasimhan acknowledges that Novartis could do more in research. He himself headed the development unit of the Vaccines Division until 2014, when Novartis sold it. Restoring this activity is out of the question, despite the need for vaccines against Covid-19 and other potential new viral diseases, he said. Now that Novartis no longer has its own expertise in this area, such an effort would be very difficult.