Pfizer made nearly $37bn (£27bn) in sales from its Covid-19 vaccine last year making it one of the most lucrative products in history " and has forecast another bumper year in 2022, with a big boost coming from its Covid-19 pill Paxlovid. The US drugmaker's overall revenues in 2021 doubled to $81.3bn. The bumper sales prompted accusations from campaigners of "pandemic profiteering". The group Global Justice Now said the annual revenue of $81bn was more than the GDP of most countries. Pharmaceutical companies have been accused of not sharing the recipe for their vaccines, which would enable drugmakers in poorer countries to produce cheaper versions of them. Global Justice Now pointed out that Pfizer's Covid-19 jab was invented by BioNTech, supported by €100m (£84m) in debt financing from the publicly owned European Investment Bank and a €375m grant from the German government. Tim Bierley, a pharma campaigner at the group, said: "The development of mRNA vaccines should have revolutionised the global Covid response. "But we've let Pfizer withhold this essential medical innovation from much of the world, all while ripping off public health systems." According to Reuters, Pfizer has sold the vaccine to African countries at $3 to $10 a shot. It has indicated that a non-profit dose costs just $6.75, or £4.98, to produce, but it has reportedly charged the NHS £18 a dose for the first 100m jabs bought and £22 a dose for the next 89m, totalling £3.76bn ... amounting to an eye-watering 299% mark-up.
Latest
Latest News
Each news summary is created according to strict standards. Here's how we do it.
Each summary is created using a consistent editorial procedure. The target length is approximately 16 lines of 11-point Arial text in a 650-pixel-wide column. Up to 25% of a summary may be set in bold to emphasize the most important ideas. Summaries are composed of verbatim excerpts presented in the same sequence as they appear in the original news source, with very minor editorial additions. Where material has been omitted between excerpts, the omission is indicated with ellipses (...). Any words added by an editor for clarity or context appear in [brackets]. Our original news editor was Fred Burks. Tod Fletcher edited most summaries from 2007 through 2014, and Mark Bailey has served as news editor since 2014.