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Position Lessons from the pandemic - Pro market economy

The challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic have pushed Germany to the limits of its resilience in some areas. Conditions were constantly changing. Driving by sight was not just an empty phrase, but the order of the day. In this respect, the pandemic should also be seen as a learning system. It is important to learn the right lessons from it.

The coronavirus pandemic presents the global community with immense challenges. The aim is to keep the health effects of the pandemic in check by providing secure medical care and at the same time to minimize the damage to economic life and our prosperity. Therefore, all measures to combat the pandemic must be examined to see whether they can contain the spread of infection and what possible economic disadvantages arise.

There is a particular need for good nationwide coordination of measures to combat the pandemic, which are the responsibility of the federal states. The industrial healthcare sector should be involved in this dialog process.

The implementation of the national strategy of comprehensive and targeted testing is only possible if medical laboratories and the diagnostics industry work together. The partnership between laboratory doctors and the diagnostics industry has also proven its worth during the pandemic. Measures that thwart this partnership are counterproductive and ultimately pose a risk to successfully combating the pandemic. For example, indiscriminate accommodation bans have now made the work of service technicians and application experts in setting up, installing and maintaining the urgently needed test infrastructure in laboratories unnecessarily difficult.

COVID-19 vaccinations are the universally hoped-for way out of the pandemic and towards a new normality. Vaccination success cannot be measured solely by the proportion of vaccinated people in the population. How strong is the protection provided by a vaccination? How long does it last? Does it need to be revaccinated and when? Laboratory values can provide answers to these questions, which are perhaps of particular interest to everyone and vaccination skeptics. The resulting evidence should be used as soon as possible.

Global supply chains and internationalized value creation have proven to be vulnerable in times of pandemic. It would be the wrong approach to reject a globalized economy and fall back into economic parochialism. Instead, it needs to be consolidated. At the same time, it is important to strengthen Europe as a location for medical technology (innovation, reducing bureaucracy, digitalization) and make it more independent.

Did you know?

Despite low interest rates and massive government aid programs, the International Monetary Fund expects global economic growth to fall by 3.5% in 2020. This would be the worst global recession in 90 years. The cost of the pandemic for the global economy in the years 2020 to 2025 is estimated at 22 trillion US dollars.

In a nutshell The Association of the Diagnostics Industry (VDGH)

As a trade association, the German Diagnostics Industry Association (VDGH) represents the interests of more than 100 companies operating in Germany with a total turnover of 6.8 billion euros in 2022. They manufacture examination systems and reagents for the diagnosis of human diseases, which generate a turnover of more than 3.5 billion euros, as well as instruments, reagents, test systems and consumables for research in the life sciences, which generate a turnover of 3.3 billion euros.

www.vdgh.de