Covid-19 briefing

Worldwide

Reducing Covid-19 controls in many countries is allowing surgical procedures to resume. Relaxation is a result of high vaccination rates and the emergence of the Omicron variant and emerging Omicron-Delta recombinant variants, leading to lower hospitalization rates.

Governments are moving towards lower Covid-19 testing rates, particularly in relation to travel testing.

Shanghai

A city-wide Covid-19 lockdown in Shanghai has affected factory and port operations, which will affect the export of medical devices and medical device subcomponents through Shanghai Port. Major companies headquartered in Shanghai include Microport Scientific, Shanghai Kehua, Shanghai Kindly, and Shanghai Kinetic. Additionally, major Western medical device manufacturers (such as Medtronic, Abbott, and Becton Dickinson) maintain subsidiaries in Shanghai.

Companies with a presence in Shanghai are likely to see operations disrupted during this lockdown, and this may impact global medical device supply chains.

Russia

Russia's healthcare sector is struggling to recover from the impacts of Covid-19, and this has been exacerbated by the impact of the Russia-Ukraine War. While the Russian government has earmarked additional healthcare funding to combat inflationary pressures, this is unlikely to benefit the private sector (accounting for over 39% of healthcare spending), and a further decline in medical devices provision in 2022 compared to 2021 is unavoidable, effectively choking any prospect of a recovery of delayed surgical procedures. Further delays in procedures will likely lead to worse medical outcomes and a decline in overall healthcare.