While most of the country was worrying about the swine flu ‘epidemic’ and the government was pandering to media pressure to buy in large quantities of antidote and vaccine, there was one winner in the whole scenario.
GlaxoSmithKline revealed that sales of its Influenza A (H1N1) vaccine reached £835m for the fourth quarter of 2010. This was based on delivery of around 130 million doses to the UK government as well as supply to the US government. GSK were keen to report that they also donated 60 million doses to the World Health Organisation.
Although the sceptics will argue about profiteering from this ‘pandemic’ the fact of the matter is that a pharmaceutical company will make profit from these scenarios. Therefore these figures show great business strategy, diversification and investment for GSK. |