Wed, Nov 17, 2021 page5

• COVID-19: Vaccine makers profit by ignoring poor: study

  INEQUITY: Just 2 percent of people in low-income nations have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, as top vaccine makers focus on rich countries

  • AFP, WASHINGTON
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  Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna are making combined profits of US$65,000 every minute from their highly successful COVID-19 vaccines while the world’s poorest countries remain largely unvaccinated, a new analysis showed.

  The companies have sold the vast majority of their doses to rich countries, leaving low-income nations in the lurch, said the People’s Vaccine Alliance (PVA), a coalition campaigning for wider access to COVID-19 vaccines, which based its calculations on the companies’ earning reports.

  The alliance estimated that the trio would make pre-tax profits of US$34 billion this year between them, which works out to more than US$1,000 a second, US$65,000 a minute or US$93.5 million a day.

  

  Slum dwellers stand in line to receive the Oxford AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine at the Pollibondhu Ershad School in Korail Slum in Dhaka yesterday.

  Photo: Reuters

  “It is obscene that just a few companies are making millions of dollars in profit every single hour, while just 2 percent of people in low-income countries have been fully vaccinated against coronavirus,” Maaza Seyoum of the African Alliance and People’s Vaccine Alliance Africa said.

  “Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna have used their monopolies to prioritize the most profitable contracts with the richest governments, leaving low-income countries out in the cold,” she added.

  Pfizer and BioNTech have delivered less than 1 percent of their total supplies to low-income countries, while Moderna has delivered just 0.2 percent, the PVA said.

  

  A healthcare worker places vials containing doses of the "Comirnaty" Pfizer BioNTech and Moderna vaccines against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) on a table at a vaccination centre in Ronda, Spain November 10, 2021.

  Photo: Reuters

  Currently, 98 percent of people in low-income countries have not been fully vaccinated.

  The three companies’ actions are in contrast to AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, which provided their vaccines on a not-for-profit basis, although both have announced they foresee ending this arrangement in the future as the COVID-19 pandemic winds down.

  Despite receiving public funding of more than US$8 billion, Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna have refused calls to transfer vaccine technology to producers in low and middle-income countries via the WHO, “a move that could increase global supply, drive down prices and save millions of lives,” PVA said.

  “In Moderna’s case, this is despite explicit pressure from the White House and requests from the WHO that the company collaborate in and help accelerate its plan to replicate the Moderna vaccine for wider production at its mRNA hub in South Africa,” the group said.

  While Pfizer chief executive officer Albert Bourla has dismissed technology transfer as “dangerous nonsense,” the WHO’s decision to grant emergency use approval to the Indian-developed Covaxin earlier this month proves that developing countries have the capacity and expertise, the PVA added.

  The PVA, whose 80 members include the African Alliance, Global Justice Now, Oxfam and UNAIDS, is calling for pharmaceutical companies to immediately suspend intellectual property rights for COVID-19 vaccines by agreeing to a proposed waiver of WTO’s TRIPS agreement.

  More than 100 nations, including the US, back that move, but it is being blocked by rich countries, including the UK and Germany.
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