Following remarks on the status of the nation’s COVID-19 fight in March, President Joe Biden is given his second COVID-19 booster shot from Pfizer by a member of the White House Medical Unit.
File
Image by Rod Lamkey/UPI | Free Image
21 October (UPI)
Pharmaceutical behemoth Pfizer announced on Friday that it would charge up to $130 per dose for its COVID-19 vaccinations, citing the vaccine’s “value.”
According to NBC News and CNN, the vaccine, which is currently free, would cost between $110 and $130 per dose when the U.S. government stops covering the shots at the beginning of 2023.
The cost comes even after Pfizer sold $36.7 billion of its COVID-19 vaccines in 2021, contributing to 45% of the company’s revenue that year.
In a report earlier this year, the international nonprofit Oxfam found that the pandemic created more than 40 new pharmaceutical billionaires.
Oxfam said that drug companies such as Moderna and Pfizer have profited from the monopolies their companies currently hold in vaccines, treatments, tests and personal protective equipment largely coming from public funding.
“Pharmaceutical giants are making over $1,000 a second in profit from vaccines alone and they are charging governments up to 24 times more than it would cost to produce vaccines on a generic basis,” Oxfam said, citing research the nonprofit previously conducted.
Pfizer, which has been accused of using “dirty tactics” to boost profits including funding misinformation about the Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine, has sold the most vaccines in the world but has delivered the least to low-income countries as a proportion of total doses sold.