BFF-56 Pfizer defends high cost of Covid vaccine

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BFF-56

HEALTH-VIRUS-PFIZER

Pfizer defends high cost of Covid vaccine

PARIS, April 15, 2021 (BSS/AFP) – The head of Pfizer said Thursday
the company’s Covid vaccine, among the priciest on the market, is no
more expensive than the cost of a meal and will not be sold to poor
countries for a profit.

The head of the US-based company defended the cost of the jabs,
which he said are saving lives and can help countries emerge from the
pandemic.

“Vaccines are very expensive,” Albert Bourla said in an interview
with several media.

“They save human lives, they allow economies to reopen, but we sell
them at the price of a meal,” he said in the interview with Les Echos
in France, Germany’s Handelsblatt, Italy’s Corriere Della Sera and El
Mundo in Spain.

Developed jointly with Germany-based BioNTech, the Pfizer vaccine
is, along with Moderna, the vaccine that has cost the European Union
the most, according to data released several months ago by a member of
the Belgian government.

And Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov warned earlier this week
that Brussels was facing a huge price hike as it negotiates nearly two
billion additional doses of the vaccine for the coming years.

“Pfizer was 12 euros ($14), then it became 15 euros. Contracts are
now being signed… at a price of 19.50 euros,” Borissov said on
Sunday.

The prices are in sharp contrast to the vaccine produced by
British-Swedish drugmaker AstraZeneca, which vowed not to make a
profit on its product during the pandemic and sold it to the EU for
less than two euros a unit.

Bourla did not confirm the price of the Pfizer vaccine but admitted
that it was sold at a higher price to developed countries like those
in the EU or the United States.

“In middle-income countries, we sell it for half the price,” he said.

“In poorer countries, including in Africa, we sell it at cost.”

However, many observers doubted the Pfizer vaccine was being widely
distributed in African countries because the product has to be stored
in ultra-cold freezers of about minus 70 degrees Celsius (minus 94
Fahrenheit) or below.

Bourla said the company was working on a new formula that would
allow the vaccine to be stored for four to six months at a normal
temperature.

BSS/AFP/MRU/2336hrs