Following the World Health Organization’s (WHO) declaration that Covid-19 is no longer a global emergency, medical device companies are anticipated to experience a decline in sales, as outlined in a report released on Tuesday.

Over the past three years of the pandemic, numerous medical device companies reaped substantial profits from the sale of tests and pharmaceuticals.

The report, authored by data and analytics firm GlobalData, forecasts that in the forthcoming years, the introduction of new Covid-19 tests to the market will diminish, with a focus on enhancing existing tests instead. This could involve refining tests’ specificity and sensitivity and developing multiparameter tests utilizing current technology.

Selena Yu, Medical Analyst at GlobalData, stated, “Companies have observed dwindling sales of Covid-19 related products over the past two quarters. Therefore, with the Covid-19 pandemic transitioning from a global emergency to an endemic virus, and the lifting of emergency use authorizations on Covid-19 tests, in vitro diagnostics (IVD) companies are striving to mitigate their losses.”

In vitro diagnostics (IVD) encompass tests conducted on samples such as blood or tissue collected from the human body.

Presently, there are 132 active clinical trials out of a total of 310 trials focusing on infectious disease IVD devices, aimed at developing Covid-19 tests.

In January 2023, several companies engaged in Covid-19 testing, including Danaher, Abbott, Labcorp, and Becton, Dickinson and Company (BD), disclosed significant declines in Covid-19 test sales.

“Now that the pandemic status has transitioned to non-emergency, the declines will become more pronounced in the upcoming months. There could be peak sales during the fall and winter seasons as the respiratory disease season resumes,” Yu added.