COVID-19 Impact on Pharmaceutical Packaging in Chemicals and Materials Industry
INTRODUCTION
The global COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the dynamic interdependencies within the global sector that exist. The pandemic outbreak of Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has created severe uncertainty about demand development globally. The pandemic epidemic has shaped and altered every industry’s entire dynamics. The effectiveness and strength of containment efforts to the degree of supply disruptions, shifts in investment patterns, changes in behavior (such as avoiding the purchase of costly products), the impact of drastic tightening in global market conditions, trust impacts, volatile commodity prices and growing debt burdens.
The pandemic of COVID-19 outbreak was started in December 2019 in the Wuhan, China, which had impacted around 110 countries or more than that across the world. COVID-19 pandemic has had impacted to each and every industry across the word.
Due to COVID-19, all the countries have terribly faced a multi-layered crisis comprising of domestic economic disruptions, plummeting external demand, collapse in the prices and collapse in supply and demand of the products across the globe. The challenges caused by the pandemic of COVID-19 have been far-reaching, especially for sectors where physical contact is inevitable. The new Coronavirus (COVID-19) is a newly discovered infectious disease which is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which manifests itself particularly as a chronic respiratory disease with pneumonia, but can affect many body organs such as the kidneys, the heart, digestive tract, blood and nervous system.
According to the United Nations, in 2020, the global economy could shrink by almost 1% due to the impact of COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic outbreak has created extreme uncertainty in market growth around the global.
Pharmaceutical packaging is a type of preparation process for pharmaceutical packaging. This process includes all operations from manufacturing to the end consumer through drug distribution channels. In terms of administration and the safe storage of pharmaceutical products, the packaging process plays a crucial role.
Pharmaceutical packaging has a wide range of important uses, as it is used both for the protection and storage of drugs and for the identification of the promotion and marketing of various brands and for the facilitation of the use of pharmaceutical products.
There are several types of packaging products in pharmaceutical packaging, which are classified as primary, secondary and tertiary. The material that surrounds the pharmaceutical product is primary drug packaging, while secondary and tertiary packaging provides additional external protection.
The COVID-19 is a global pandemic which has highlighted the complex interdependencies which exist within the global pharmaceutical sector. The outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic disease has created extreme uncertainty in the pharmaceutical packaging market growth globally. The pandemic outbreak has affected and changed the complete dynamics of each industry in ways that are hard to believe.
In the current situation of the COVID-19 pandemic, considerable efforts are underway globally to treat, diagnose and prevent virus infections. Pharmaceutical companies are working to fight COVID-19 globally.
Due to decades of experience with similar viruses, pharmaceutical companies have acquired profound scientific knowledge. To identify additional potential treatments for research and development, companies are researching vaccine candidates and making inventories of research portfolio libraries.
The importance of pharmaceutical packaging in the pharmaceutical sector is to strike the right balance between compliance with regulations, costs and quality. Therefore, as the dynamics of the pharmaceutical industry are disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic scenario, it is clear that during the current scenario, pharmaceutical packaging and labeling will also undergo major shifts.
The scenario of COVID-19 pandemic is disrupting as well as transforming the industries as never before. Pharmaceutical packaging is also getting re-imagined in a big way, and technology is expected to playing a starring role in this transformation. The new Coronavirus (COVID-19) is a newly discovered infectious disease which is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which manifests itself particularly as a chronic respiratory disease with pneumonia, but can affect many organs such as the kidneys, the heart, digestive tract, blood and nervous system.
In the current scenario of COVID-19 pandemic, the world’s medical community mainly focuses on COVID-19 due to which the research for other treatments conditions is paused. Heart disease, cancer, diabetes and other diseases have touched the lives of more than 1.3 million Americans.
In the pharmaceutical packaging the packaging bottles comes in various forms, among them glass bottles are commonly used to store the drugs. The pharmaceutical packaging materials include:
- The degree of protection that is needed for the product
- The sterilization technique that is used
- The dosage (this will affect the size)
The lockdown scenario due to the COVID-19 pandemic situation has triggered the disruptions in all the sectors. Pharma sector has been jolted too but due to the world wide spread of pandemic situation has highly demanded of various types of medicines in terms to support the pandemic situation word wide.
IMPACT ON DEMAND
The pharmaceutical industry is vast as well as competitive; many of the companies are engaged to develop the market drugs in order to support the COVID-19 pandemic. In the pharmaceutical sector, the importance of pharmaceutical packaging is to strike the right balance between regulatory compliance, cost and quality. As the dynamics of the pharmaceutical industry are therefore disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic scenario, it is clear that there will also be major shifts in pharmaceutical packaging and labeling during the current scenario.
Due to the ongoing outbreak of COVID-19, the global market has been highly affected by the pandemic. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic situation, many companies engaged in operating in the field of pharmaceutical packaging are obliged to stop their manufacturing process and production. Governments have updated their trade strategies, thereby partly suspending the operation of many markets. The flow of profits is freely influenced by this disruption in the behavior of the business operation.
The scenario of current COVID-19 pandemic is acting as an external disruptive in order to force in the industry which is accelerating innovation around to the traditional pharmaceutical packaging development process. The pharmaceutical packaging involves all the operations from research, development, production, to marketing products. It is essential to understand in order to improving the pharmaceutical packaging.
Pharmaceutical packaging is used, and should be economical, to protect against biological, physical and chemical hazards. Throughout the time period, the package should ensure adequate stability. The pharmaceutical package should provide adequate content-related data together with legal requirements, route of administration, storage conditions, batch number, expiry date, name of manufacturer.
The pandemic of COVID-19 has a worldwide effect that puts immense pressure on the public health system to test and keep people alive. The packaging is outlined as a way to provide a product with presentation, protection, convenience, and compliance throughout storage until consumed.
CONCLUSION
In terms of the stability of the pharmaceutical dosage form, the pharmaceutical packaging material plays a crucial role. Pharmaceutical packaging should retain the integrity of the dosage form, have good mechanical strength, and be inert and not fragile in nature.
Different packaging materials used in the packaging of the pharmaceutical dosage forms are glass, aluminum foil as well as plastic. The spread of COVID-19 pandemic is significantly propelling the demand of pharmaceutical packaging in order to develop more medicines to support the treatment of current ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
