How immigration has helped Covid-19 and medicine

The Covid-19 vaccine and other ways immigrants have impacted the pharmaceutical sector.

The creation of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine has been a major development in the global fight against the Coronavirus pandemic. As the vaccine begins to be rolled out across the UK, it has the potential to save hundreds of thousands of lives in the country and millions globally. But if it wasn’t for immigration, it may never have been created. This is because Pfizer is an American company founded by German immigrants and now headed by Greek immigrant Albert Bourla, whilst BioNTech is a German company founded by two Turkish immigrants, Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci. It’s clear then that immigration has been a major contributor to the developing of a vaccine.

Immigrant contributions to the pharmaceutical sector

When we look at the way that immigration has impacted the pharmaceutical sector, it’s clear that the Covid-19 vaccine is just one example of many. In fact, we can thank immigrants for some of the biggest breakthroughs that the pharmaceutical industry has ever seen. Below are just a few examples of the immigrants who have made significant contributions to the pharmaceutical sector. 

Dr Albert Sabin

Dr Albert Sabin is best known as the developer of the oral live-virus polio vaccine. Born in Poland in 1906, Dr Sabin immigrated to America with his family in 1921 to avoid persecution as a Jewish family. During his life in the US, Dr Sabin dedicated his career to ending the suffering of many with his medical research. His oral polio vaccine was a key step in the near eradication of the disease. As well as this, during World War II he also developed vaccines for encephalitis, sand-fly fever, and dengue fever.

Jean-Francois Borel

Born in Belgium, microbiologist Jean-Francois Borel has been credited with discovering cyclosporine, whilst he worked and studied in Switzerland. Cyclosporine was the first drug to shut down the immune system and plays a key role in the success of organ transplants. 

Gerty Cori 

Gerty Cori was an Austro-Hungarian-American biochemist who became the first woman to ever win a Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. Working with her husband, she is credited with discovering the enzymes that convert glycogen to sugar and back again into glycogen. Her groundbreaking research led to the development of treatments for diabetes. 

Axel Ullrich 

Axel Ullrich is a German biochemist who studied and worked in the US. He is credited, alongside two others, with the discovery of the first targeted therapy for breast cancer, Herceptin, which attaches itself to the HER2 receptors on the surface of breast cancer cells and blocks them from receiving growth signals.

Supporting research

The contributions of immigrants go much further than these few examples, with research further highlighting the impact that immigration has had. The Institute for Immigration Research has revealed that although only 13% of the United States’ population is foreign-born, 17% of the employed labour force in the pharmaceutical industry came from outside the country. Their research also showed that immigrant contribution was even greater when it came to higher-skilled occupations within the sector, with immigrants making up 33% of the total research and development pharmaceutical workforce and more than 40% of the scientists.

Speaking about the research, the institute’s director James Witte said: “Given that success in the pharmaceutical industry is so dependent on research, it is truly striking how much research and development labour is provided by immigrants.” 

And it’s not just the US where immigrants contribute greatly to the sector, but all over the world. For example, in the UK approximately 5,000 non-British EU citizens are employed in the pharmaceutical and life sciences industries. 

Beyond the pandemic

In recent years, anti-immigrant sentiment across Europe has been high, but the Covid-19 pandemic has proven just how necessary immigrants are. Not only can we thank immigrants for helping develop a vaccine, but they have also propped up healthcare systems all over Europe during such an unprecedented and devastating time. Now, there’s a chance that attitudes towards immigration could be changing, but it’s yet to be seen whether the pandemic will have a lasting effect on this. 

Reanna Smith is a content writer for the Immigration Advice Service, a team of lawyers who assist with a variety of immigration issues including work visas and citizenship applications.