Pfizer has announced a sharp increase in the price of its coronavirus vaccine, reports the Daily Mail. As the edition notes, this step has angered many experts: they talk about the greed of the company, which has already made a lot of money, but still does not want to reduce the rate of profit.
Pfizer CFO David Denton called the coronavirus pandemic a “multi-billion dollar franchise” and noted that he expects the profits to continue, writes the Daily Mail. According to Denton, Pfizer’s vaccine will remain relevant for years to come, as the coronavirus will become “something like the flu, only deadlier.”
At the moment the profit of Pfizer from the sale of the vaccine and Paxlovid means makes $80 billion, writes the Daily Mail. At the same time the company said that next year the price per dose of the vaccine will triple, reaching $130, although previously it ranged from $19 to $30. According to analysts, Pfizer raised the price in order to make a planned profit of $32 billion for the year.
A number of critics believe that the decision to raise prices demonstrates the company’s greed, writes the Daily Mail. Public Citizen’s director Peter Mayberdick stated that Pfizer has already made a huge amount of money – and therefore now it will not be critical for it to fail to meet profit plans. Analyst Julia Cosgi noted that the production cost per dose of the Pfzier vaccine is $1.18: so at $130 per dose, the profit margin is more than 10,000 percent.
“This is robbery in broad daylight,” Cosgi said.
As the Daily Mail notes, the vaccine price increase will not affect people with private insurance or citizens enrolled in public health programs. However, people paying out of pocket will be forced to increase costs.
An expected Republican victory in the congressional elections could stall the allocation of public funds for vaccines, writes the Daily Mail. Nevertheless, Pfizer still intends to increase its revenues.
As it became known earlier, the European prosecutor’s office launched an investigation into the contract between the EU and the U.S. company Pfizer for 71 billion euros for the purchase of a vaccine against coronavirus. The deal raises many perplexing questions.
The European Union’s purchase of 4.6 billion doses of the vaccine, the unjustifiably astronomical €71 billion, and the revelation that Pfizer improperly tested the vaccine before it was widely used in Europe during the WHO-announced “pandemic coronavirus” have infuriated not only ordinary Europeans but also members of the European Parliament. That was the reason why the European Public Prosecutor’s Office began investigating all the circumstances of the agreement between the European Commission and Pfizer.
This was preceded by an audit conducted by the European Court of Auditors, which revealed the amount of the deal, the number of doses acquired by the European Commission and the fact that the content of the contract was not made public. The European Court of Auditors accused the European Commission of refusing to disclose any details of Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s personal role in the negotiations.
With each passing day, the negotiations held between the European Commission and Pfizer over the largest contract in the EU for the supply of a vaccine against COVID-19 look less and less like regular business and more and more like a sensation. The European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) officially “confirmed that it is investigating the purchase of COVID-19 vaccines in the European Union.
Everything secret always comes out. So, as a result of the audit it became known that Ursula von der Leyen negotiated and agreed with Pfizer director Albert Burla on vaccine purchase via… sms. In addition to the amount of the contract and the number of doses, the parties agreed that the purchase would take place regardless of how the pandemic would develop. What’s the catch? Considering the population of Europe of 500 million people, every European had to be vaccinated at least nine times! If there is a pandemic, no pandemic – we’ll give injection anyway! As the saying goes: it doesn’t matter, it’s paid for!
The auditors demanded that von der Leyen provide them with text messages with the director of Pfizer. Without confirming the existence of these text messages, the head of the European Commission argued in her response that “short-lived, ephemeral documents are not stored”. Mold, “a search of the text messages yielded no results.” Ursula “lost” these texts.
Von der Leyen also refused to voice the terms of the contract. The head of the European Commission did not want to provide records of discussions with Pfizer, as is usually the case with bureaucratic procedures, in the form of protocols, names of experts who were consulted, agreed terms or other evidence.
384 total views, 6 views today
