Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca said that it expects the revenue from its COVID-19 vaccines to decline by up to a quarter this year as demand wanes for the product.
Announcing its results for the first quarter of 2022, the firm said the sales of Vaxzevria—more commonly known as the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine—is expected to decline later in the year.
“Total revenue from COVID-19 medicines is anticipated to decline by a low-to-mid-twenties percentage,” the business said on April 29, adding that the majority of Vaxzevria revenue in 2022 is expected to come from initial contracts.
It comes despite global sales of the vaccine rising around fourfold in the first quarter of this year compared to the same period 12 months ago, to more than $1.1 billion.
In Europe, sales of the vaccine were down by 40 percent during the same period, the business revealed.
But it said that declining sales of Vaxzevria will be partially offset by Evusheld, a COVID-19 treatment that was last month approved for use in the UK with patients with poor immune responses.
The firm’s overall revenue grew by 60 percent to $11.4 billion in the first three months of the year, beating analyst expectations by a little under half a billion dollars.
England, Scotland, and Wales have all recorded a drop in infections while the trend in Northern Ireland is “uncertain,” according to new figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on April 29.
Across the UK, 2.9 million people in private households are estimated to have had the CCP virus in the week to April 23, down from 3.8 million the previous week.
The figures confirm the surge in COVID-19 driven by the highly transmissible Omicron BA.2 variant is now receding, though the prevalence of the virus is high by historic standards.
The figures come as the number of people in hospital with COVID-19 in the UK is also on a clear downward trend, having peaked at around the same level that was reached during the first Omicron surge in January.
England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland have scrapped all legal COVID-19 restrictions.
Wales has ended most restrictions, including mask mandates for public places, though the mask mandate for medical settings will remain in place for another week.
