Team Biden on Wednesday announced it is funneling another $3.2 billion in U.S. taxpayer money to Pfizer in a deal to purchase 105 million doses of the Big Pharma company's Covid vaccine for a fall vaccination campaign. The deal includes an option to buy up to 300 million doses.
The huge payday for Pfizer includes a combination of adult and pediatric doses, and supplies of a re-formulated booster shot that will contain the original Wuhan variant and BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants.
The FDA on Thursday advised Covid vaccine manufacturers to produce an updated booster vaccine — which has not yet undergone human clinical trials — for this fall.
“The White House has dropped all pretense that this is about protecting public health,” said Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., chairman and chief legal counsel for Children’s Health Defense. “This is an unsheathed, corporate welfare project to further enrich the shareholders of the most profitable industry in history.”
Pfizer said in May it expects about $32 billion in Covid vaccine sales for 2022. That figure was based on agreements signed before the new contract announced on Wednesday.
“It’s almost as if these states — and their citizens — are paying for these vaccines twice over: once to bankroll much, or nearly all, of the research itself, then again to buy back the products of this public-funded research,” Quartz reported last month. “Pharma corporations benefit hugely from this model.”
Under the deal announced on Wednesday, Team Biden is set to pay Pfizer more than $30 per dose on average, which is significantly higher than the $19.50 it paid in its initial Pfizer contract.
During a February 2021 earnings call, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said the company could make significant profits as demand for its Covid vaccine subsidies by charging higher prices and implementing routine booster doses for new variants of the virus.
Pfizer never saw distributing its Covid vax as a one-time event, but something that will continue for the foreseeable future.
“Every year, you need to go to get your flu vaccine,” Bourla said. “It’s going to be the same with Covid. In a year, you will have to go and get your annual shot for Covid to be protected.”
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