Fighting Covid-19 together

1. Race against time

The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic presents huge chal- lenges to healthcare systems worldwide and hence also to the research-based pharmaceutical industry. Probably the most frequently asked question in the past few months is: when will pharma research come up with an effective medicine or vaccine against Covid-19? It is difficult to provide an answer to this, but one thing is already clear: never before have pharmaceutical companies and academic research institutions responded so quickly to a new pathogen as they have to SARS-CoV-2. In this race against time, they are joining together across bor- ders and making an unparalleled effort to manage this crisis, whether in research and development or in production and securing the supply of diagnostics and medicines to the pop- ulation