A healthcare worker prepares to administer a Pfizer coronavirus disease vaccine. File
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Reuters
For this pandemic period, the company’s pricing approach is based on the principle of ensuring broad access and supplies to the governments, a Pfizer spokesperson said in a statement. Global pharma major Pfizer has said its coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine is being priced in a way that will help governments to ensure that there is little to no out-of-pocket costs for their people, as it seeks to ensure access to the vaccine across the world. For this pandemic period, the company’s pricing approach is based on the principle of ensuring broad access and supplies to the governments, a Pfizer spokesperson said in a statement.
Covid-19 vaccines look set to protect millions of citizens of the world’s richest countries in the coming months. But inoculating the rest of the planet’s population may mean finding a way around an impasse over intellectual property. Representatives from all 164 member states of the World Trade Organization met last week in Geneva to discuss a proposal from India and South Africa to waive broad sections of the WTO’s intellectual property rules and to try to forge an agreement on how patents developed in the race against Covid-19 should be recognised. The meeting ended without consensus, leaving poorer countries who sponsored the proposal frustrated and legal protections for vaccines intact. That may be a victory for patent protection advocates, but pressure for change will only grow if billions of people in poorer countries go unvaccinated while the rich world starts getting a steady flow of doses from Pfizer and BioNTech SE, Moderna and AstraZeneca.
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Covid-19 vaccines look set to protect millions of citizens of the world’s richest countries in the coming months. But inoculating the rest of the planet’s population may mean finding a way around an impasse over intellectual property. Representatives from all 164 member states of the World Trade Organization met last week in Geneva to discuss a proposal from India and South Africa to waive broad sections of the WTO’s intellectual property rules and to try to forge an agreement on how patents developed in the race against Covid-19 should be recognized. The meeting ended without consensus, leaving poorer countries who sponsored the proposal frustrated and legal protections for vaccines intact. That may be a victory for patent protection advocates, but pressure for change will only grow if billions of people in poorer countries go unvaccinated while the rich world starts getting a steady flow of doses from Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE, Moderna Inc. and AstraZeneca Plc.
A patent gives a drugmaker exclusive rights to manufacture a vaccine it developed, also providing it the power to charge a price that covers the costs of research and development. Their profit margin per dose, however, depends on the urgency of the situation, and amid a pandemic, charging anything more than development costs is bound to be controversial. India s proposal would require that the waiver remain in place until there’s been widespread vaccination and the majority of the world s population has developed immunity.
Whether it’s possible to reconcile will only be clear as the pandemic plays out. The European Union and US, home to leading drugmakers, are vehemently opposed to the proposition, though pricing may offer some room for negotiation.