- Companies received public money for research and Northern countries bought vaccines in advance. Meanwhile, multinationals increased vaccine prices. Currently, in the poorest countries, only 23% have total doses, according to the SOMO study.
Pharmaceutical companies make 90 billion euros with the Covid-19 vaccine in 2021 and 2022. The Salto reports the study published by the Multinational Corporations Research Center (SOMO).
Pfizer/BioNTech has been the company that has earned the most money, with 40 billion dollars. It is followed by Moderna (20 million) and Sinovac (19 million). The multinationals AstraZeneca (4 million), Johnson and Johnson (2.4 million) and Novavax (1.1 million) have gained significantly less.
These companies have had various sources of income. Millions of public dollars for vaccine research and development have been purchased by the northern countries. According to the study, seven vaccine producers received $5.8 million from public funds, of which $5 million is from the US Government. However, most of the revenue was in advance purchases. According to the study, pharmaceutical companies purchased $86.6 billion before the vaccine was marketed.
Increased vaccine
The vaccine agreements did not determine anything about price freezing. With this, its price increased once it was released to the market. For example, the Pfizer/BioNtech vaccine increased from 19 to 30 euros and the Moderna vaccine from 16 to 26 euros. Thus, company profit rates increased from 49% to 76%.
In the meantime, there have been major territorial differences in the process of population integration. Currently, 74 per cent of the population of high-income countries has the total vaccine dose, compared with 23 per cent of low-income countries.