Pfizer And Moderna Increase mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine Prices In EU: Report

U.S pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Moderna have raised the prices for their Covid-19 vaccines in the latest contract with European Union(EU), the Financial Times reported.

The new price for the Pfizer shot was 19.50 euros ($23.15) compared with 15.50 euros ($18.39) previously, FT reported citing portions of the contracts it had seen.

The price of a dose of the Moderna vaccine was set at $25.50, according to the contracts, compared with $22.60 in the first procurement deal.

The European Union has stumbled through its vaccine campaign amid supply chain disruptions, concerns over side effects, and competing interests between various nations within its ranks. European nations are now combating hard to control the spread of delta variant of the virus.

The increase in pricing has been attributed to claims that the messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) vaccines of Pfizer and Moderna have a higher efficacy rates Pfizer and Moderna efficacy rates compared to the lower-priced Oxford/AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson jabs.

Pfizer announced on Jul 28 that it has sold $7.8 billion in Covid-19 vaccines in the second quarter of 2021 and raised its full-year 2021 revenue projections for its Covid-19 vaccines to $33.5 billion from earlier estimated $26 billion.

The company said that it had signed contracts to deliver 2.1 billion doses of the vaccine this year.

Pfizer shares profits on sales of Covid-19 doses evenly with its partner BioNTech which designed the first messenger RNA-based vaccine

“The second quarter was remarkable in a number of ways,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said in a statement. “Most visibly, the speed and efficiency of our efforts with BioNTech to help vaccinate the world against COVID-19 have been unprecedented, with now more than a billion doses of BNT162b2 having been delivered globally.”

Pfizer also disclosed that ongoing testing of a booster shot, given six months after the second vaccine dose, showed it raised antibody levels against the more-transmissible Delta variant to 11 times higher in older people and five times higher in younger people, compared to levels after two doses.

In July, Pfizer Inc indicated that it was planning to seek U.S. regulatory authorisation approval for a booster dose of its COVID-19 vaccine within the next month. The need for a booster dose is based on evidence of greater risk of reinfection six months after inoculation and the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant, the company said.

Pfizer's chief scientific officer, Mikael Dolsten, said the recently reported drop in efficacy rates of vaccines in Israel was mostly due to infections in people who had been vaccinated in January or February.

Total global spending on COVID-19 vaccines is projected to reach $157 billion by 2025, driven by mass vaccination programs underway and “booster shots” expected every two years, according to a report by U.S. health data company IQVIA Holdings Inc. Booster shots are likely to follow initial vaccinations every two years, the report said, based on current data on the duration of effect of the vaccines.