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UK Weathers Challenges Of COVID-19 And Brexit

BGMA’s Smith Praises Pandemic Response, But Sees Destructive Potential Of Brexit

 
• By Dave Wallace

Departing BGMA leader Warwick Smith highlights successes in the UK off-patent industry’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic but offers unambiguous criticism of Brexit in the concluding part of an exclusive interview with Generics Bulletin.

Covid Brexit
The UK continues to grapple with COVID-19 and Brexit • Source: Shutterstock

Over the past year, Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic have represented two major threats to the smooth functioning of the UK generics and biosimilars market. And after discussing how far the country’s off-patent industry has come over the past 25 years (Also see "BGMA’s Smith Reflects On 25 Years Of Progress" - Generics Bulletin, 1 April, 2021.), departing British Generic Manufacturers Association leader Warwick Smith turned his attention to these two more recent challenges in the second part of our exclusive interview.

Casting his mind back a year to the early days of the pandemic, Smith described how the UK generics industry had been part of the

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