Pfizer to quadruple cost of COVID-19 vaccine

Pfizer has indicated the price range at which its COVID-19 vaccine will be sold after the contract with the US government for its supply during the pandemic expires. According to the agency Reuters, Pfizer intends to bring the vaccine to the commercial market at prices ranging from $110 to $130 per dose. This is almost four times more expensive than it is now under a contract with the US government.

The company expects commercial sales of a COVID-19 vaccine to begin as early as next year. The US government is now paying Pfizer $30.50 per dose of the vaccine as part of a second contract with the company. Under the terms of the first contract, the cost of one dose was $19.5. Wells Fargo analyst Mohit Bansal, quoted by Reuters, estimates that a vaccine price hike could generate $2.5 billion to $3 billion in revenue for Pfizer a year. According to him, experts expected much lower prices for the vaccine – about $50 or at least $80 per dose, at which Pfizer sells it in a number of high-income countries. Experts also expect that other COVID-19 vaccine makers, including Moderna and Novavax, will now follow Pfizer’s example, and possibly mark future prices for their products in about the same range.

Meanwhile, representatives of the People’s Vaccine Alliance, a public organization that advocates free access to vaccination against COVID-19, called Pfizer’s price increase obscene. Edition of The Daily Beast quotes the words of the adviser of this organization, Julia Kosgay, who said that, according to experts, the production of one dose of the vaccine costs Pfizer only $ 1.18. “While health care workers and vulnerable people in developing countries remain unvaccinated, Pfizer shamelessly rips off the population, demanding ever larger sums,” she said.

Alena Miklashevskaya