By Mary Kangley 
April’s Top 50 Pharmaceutical Companies mentioned by HCPs on Twitter in relation to COVID-19
| April | March | Company | Total Mentions | Account mentions | Account retweets | Number of accounts mentioned |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Gilead | 2618 | 360 | 57 | 1 |
| 2 | 11 | GSK | 701 | 328 | 76 | 5 |
| 3 | 7 | Sanofi | 661 | 255 | 66 | 12 |
| 4 | 5 | Johnson & Johnson | 603 | 549 | 311 | 18 |
| 5 | 6 | Novartis | 588 | 188 | 38 | 7 |
| 6 | 2 | Roche | 371 | 88 | 25 | 3 |
| 7 | 18 | AstraZeneca | 355 | 190 | 18 | 5 |
| 8 | 12 | Pfizer | 305 | 110 | 31 | 7 |
| 9 | 3 | Abbott | 219 | 220 | 92 | 2 |
| 10 | 10 | Bayer | 178 | 75 | 10 | 3 |
| 11 | 9 | Regenero | 149 | 43 | 5 | 1 |
| 12 | 16 | Merck & co | 104 | 77 | 32 | 3 |
| 13 | 8 | Teva | 98 | 61 | 41 | 4 |
| 14 | 20 | Novo Nordisk | 94 | 81 | 25 | 4 |
| 15 | 14 | Lilly | 91 | 92 | 28 | 3 |
| 16 | 4 | Biogen | 73 | 23 | 1 | 1 |
| 17 | 26 | Amgen | 71 | 45 | 31 | 3 |
| 18 | 22 | Boehringer | 63 | 54 | 22 | 6 |
| 19 | 21 | Fresenius | 59 | 28 | 19 | 3 |
| 20 | 17 | Takeda | 53 | 45 | 7 | 4 |
| 21 | 28 | BMS | 41 | 39 | 28 | 1 |
| 22 | 27 | Daiichi-Sankyo | 29 | 29 | 5 | 1 |
| 23 | 24 | CSL | 28 | 20 | 14 | 2 |
| 24 | 36 | Astellas | 28 | 27 | 1 | 2 |
| 25 | 25 | Menarini | 24 | 18 | 8 | 1 |
| 26 | 13 | Mylan | 23 | 6 | 0 | 1 |
| 27 | 15 | AbbVie | 23 | 14 | 8 | 4 |
| 28 | 29 | Bausch | 19 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 29 | 33 | Merck KGaA | 14 | 12 | 2 | 2 |
| 30 | 35 | Vertex | 9 | 9 | 0 | 1 |
| 31 | 30 | UCB | 8 | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| 32 | 31 | Ipsen | 8 | 6 | 5 | 2 |
| 33 | 50 | Alexion | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 34 | 19 | Grifols | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 35 | 32 | Allergan | 7 | 4 | 0 | 1 |
| 36 | 50 | Mallinckrodt | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 37 | 34 | Celgene | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 38 | 38 | Servier | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 |
| 39 | 37 | Eisai | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 40 | 50 | Stada arzneimittel | 3 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| 41 | 50 | Otsuka | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 42 | 50 | Chugai | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 43 | 23 | Sun | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 50 | 50 | Shire | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 50 | 50 | Ferring | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 50 | 50 | Sumitomo dainippon | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 50 | 50 | Jiangsu hengrui | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 50 | 50 | Endo | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 50 | 50 | Mitsubishi tanabe pharma | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 50 | 50 | Sino | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
In April 2020, the five pharmaceutical companies that were mentioned the most by HCPs relating to Covid-19 on Twitter in April 2020 were Gilead, GSK, Sanofi, Johnson and Johnson (J&J) and Novartis.
Gilead continued to be the most mentioned company in relation to Covid-19, with more tweets from HCPs about the company than last month. This month, its Covid-19 treatment candidate, remdesivir, was discussed in 80% of posts as the company dealt with prematurely released data. There were unfavourable responses from HCPs around the efficacy of the product and reliability of the trials.
Remdesivir bottomline:
3 randomized trials #COVID
Trial 1 (China): No significant benefit
Trial 2 (Gilead): No control arm. Can’t say much
Trial 3 (NIH):
Death rate 8% Remdesivir vs 11.6% placebo
Meaning: you would need to treat 28 patients with remdesivir to save one life— Vincent Rajkumar (@VincentRK) April 30, 2020
Spikes in pharmaceutical company mentions were driven by key press releases around testing and treatment/vaccine candidates.
Conversation about Sanofi peaked when it was revealed that President Trump may have financial interest in the company after he had publicly advocated for their hydroxychloroquine product, Plaquenil, for the treatment of Covid-19. HCPs commented on this as a conflict of interest. Novartis received similar engagement as another manufacturer of hydroxychloroquine.
“Mr. Trump himself has a small personal financial interest in Sanofi, the French drugmaker that makes the brand-name version of hydroxychloroquine.”
no worse pharma conflict of interest than profiteering over people in a pandemic — as president #covid19 https://t.co/JdOIb8eBoy
— Andrew Boozary MD (@drandrewb) April 7, 2020
The conversation online has increased since the beginning of 2020, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. CREATION.co continues to track this online discussion and recently ran two webinars sharing advice for health communicators in government, NGOs and pharmaceutical companies during the pandemic:
- Coronavirus Digital Communications Strategies for NGOs, governments and health policy.
- Coronavirus Digital Communication Strategies for pharma.
READ LAST MONTH’S TOP 50 PHARMA TRACKER:
Methodology notes:
- In April 2020, CREATION Pinpoint® identified 7,172 healthcare professional (HCP) authored tweets about Covid-19 from 4,202 individual HCPs mentioning a top-50 pharmaceutical company (according to revenue).
- Data for this research was analysed from the online Twitter conversations of HCPs in relation to Covid-19 in all languages mentioning a Top 50 pharmaceutical company between April 1st and April 30th 2020.
- Unless otherwise specified, mentions of a company are not limited to its Twitter account(s).
- In some cases, a tweet may mention more than one company account (eg. @abbottnews and @abbottglobal) – this only counts as one Company Mention but two Account Mentions.
- The Number of Twitter Accounts Mentioned only include those accounts mentioned by HCPs.
- * Johnson & Johnson was included as a whole, encompassing its pharmaceutical subsidiary, Janssen.
- ** Whilst included in the Top 50 Pharma list according to revenue from 2019, Shire has since been acquired by Takeda and no longer holds a Twitter account.
