The US pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Moderna raised the price of their anticovid vaccines by more than a quarter and a tenth, respectively, in the latest supply contracts to the European Union, the «Financial Times» newspaper said this Sunday.
The terms of the contracts, signed this year through 2023 for a total of 2.1 billion doses, were renegotiated after clinical studies indicated that the mRNA-type vaccines of these two companies had better efficacy rates than the cheaper Oxford ones. AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, says the newspaper.
The price of a dose of the Pfizer preparation went from the current 15.50 euros to 19.50 euros, according to parts of the contract to which the FT has had access.
The price of a dose of Moderna rose to $ 25.50, from about € 19 or $ 22.60 set in the first supply agreement.
However, that amount is less than about $ 28.5 that had been agreed previously, as the order was increased, explains the newspaper.
The newspaper notes that drug companies will make a lot of money as countries increase their orders to administer third doses of the vaccine next winter.
According to data from industry consultants, in 2022 it is expected that Pfizer, which shares profits with the German BioNTech, will earn 56,000 million dollars from the sale of its vaccine, while Moderna would earn about 30,000 million.
