Top 50 Pharma Tracker: Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine provokes HCP conversation as they discuss blood clots as a side effect.

Discover what healthcare professionals (HCPs) think about pharmaceutical products and their manufacturers, as it happens, through CREATION.co’s tracking updates. How are HCPs responding to drug launch news? How are HCPs talking about or engaging with the Top 50 pharma companies on social media? Each week CREATION.co’s tracking updates bring you the latest insights from the conversation of HCPs across the globe discussing these topics and more.

March’s Top 50 Pharmaceutical Companies mentioned by HCPs on Twitter

March’s insights from HCPs mentioning the Top 50 Pharmaceutical Companies

During the month of March 2021, the five pharmaceutical companies most talked about by healthcare professionals (HCPs) on Twitter slightly changed from the previous month. Eli Lilly made it to the top five and was placed fifth on the ranking. AstraZeneca surpassed Pfizer and was the most talked about pharmaceutical company this month. The final ranking was AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Johnson and Johnson (J&J), GSK, and Lilly.

This month HCPs centered their discussions on the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, keeping the focus of conversation the same as last month. AstraZeneca was the most discussed company by HCPs due to safety issues being raised regarding blood clots as a side effect of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. Some HCPs shared the halt of the vaccine in certain EU countries, suggesting there was a political agenda. Other HCPs disseminated information showing that the WHO (World Health Organization), EMA (European Medicine Agency) and the MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency) stated no evidence to suggest blood clots as a side effect of the vaccine.

Regarding Pfizer and J&J, HCPs continued to praise the efficacy of their vaccines, while GSK was mainly mentioned due to their partnership with Novavax to help produce its COVID-19 vaccine for use in the UK.

HCP posts about top 50 pharma companies increased in volume when compared to the month of February, this was primarily due to the volume of posts about AstraZeneca increasing by 185%. Mentions about Pfizer remained close in volume decreasing by 2.5%, while J%J increased in volume by 17%.

1/7 – “The #COVID19 vaccine made by BioNTech and Pfizer has been highly effective at preventing infection in Israel, according to the first real-world data showing that vaccination stops transmission of the virus.”https://t.co/b1dwdWALzO

— Antoine FLAHAULT (@FLAHAULT) February 21, 2021

GSK says it will help manufacture Novavax #covid19 vaccine, up to 60M doses at its UK facility at Barnard Castle, for use in the UK. GSK to provide fill-finish manufacturing capacity as early as May.

— Meg Tirrell (@megtirrell) March 29, 2021

The three most shared links by HCPs, from diverse sources, showed that the key topic of interest for HCPs this month was the safety of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.

1. The most shared article by HCPs was a news article published by the EMA’s safety committee assuring that the benefits of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine outweigh the possible risks associated with blood clots.
2. The AstraZeneca AZD1222 phase III trial was also shared by HCPs, showing it met the primary efficacy endpoint in preventing COVID-19 and also indicating no side effects of blood clots in the 21,583 people who were vaccinated.
3. In third place, HCPs shared a news article from CBC, stating that Canada suspended the use of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine for people under the age of 55 due to concerns regarding rare blood clots side effects.

The volume of COVID-19 conversation in the context of top 50 pharma increased from February to March by 70%, and it made up 78% of the overall HCP conversation in March.

HCPs also used their social media channels to discuss topics outside of the COVID-19 conversation, such as trials and studies of promising treatments. When mentioning Eli Lilly, HCPs talked about a study of an experimental drug in diabetes that showed to reduce blood sugar in patients, and Novartis was mentioned due to a phase III trial for radioligand therapy in patients with prostate cancer.

Eli Lilly said Thursday that a study showed its experimental diabetes drug, #tirzepatide, reduced patients’ blood sugar and body weight more than a rival medicine, Novo Nordisk’s #Ozempic https://t.co/jcow2w2g8U by @matthewherper @statnews

— C. Michael Gibson MD (@CMichaelGibson) March 4, 2021

Novartis announces positive result of phase III study with radioligand therapy 177Lu-PSMA-617 in patients with advanced prostate cancer | ⁦@OncoAlert⁩ ⁦@PCFnews⁩ ⁦@PCF_Science⁩ ⁦@DanaFarber_GU⁩ ⁦@Novartis⁩ https://t.co/oAfQoqqlZZ

— Toni Choueiri, MD (@DrChoueiri) March 23, 2021

CREATION.co continues to analyse online HCP conversation on a variety of topics including virtual congress, healthcare changes since the pandemic, product development and therapy area specific insights.

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• In March 2021, CREATION Pinpoint^® identified 86,658 healthcare professional (HCP) authored tweets from 23,626 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 all languages mentioning a Top 50 pharmaceutical company between March 1st and March 31st 2021.
• 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 and Account Mention.
• Johnson & Johnson was included as a whole, encompassing its pharmaceutical subsidiary, Janssen. In March, 2,150 of these posts mentioned Janssen.

The Top 50 Pharma tracker archive