Pfizer exec reportedly says COVID-19 vaccine pricing is a ‘signficant opportunity’ post-pandemic

Pfizer CFO & EVP of supply chain Frank D’Amelio has said there could be an opportunity to potentially hike up prices on its COVID-19 vaccine in a post-pandemic state.

Speaking last week at the Barclays Global Healthcare Conference, D’Amelio revealed that the company is considering what will become of the vaccine situation, especially involving pricing, once the pandemic is in the past but shots may still be required.

“What we believe — what I believe — is as we move from … a pandemic situation to an endemic situation normal market forces, normal market conditions will start to kick in,” D’Amelio said, according to a transcript of the presentation from SeekingAlpha. “And factors like efficacy, booster ability, clinical utility will basically become very important and we view that as quite frankly a significant opportunity for our vaccine from a demand perspective, from a pricing perspective given the clinical profile of our vaccine. So [there is] clearly more to come here. But we think as this shifts from pandemic to endemic, we think there’s an opportunity here for us.”

To date, Pfizer, in collaboration with BioNTech, has been producing vaccines for various governments, including the U.S., under contracts — while they are being administered to the public in various rollouts for no cost.

According to a CBS News report, although Pfizer received government contracts to produce doses for the U.S., unlike the other two companies with authorized vaccines (Moderna and Johnson & Johnson), Pfizer’s deal did not include funding for R&D. The report said that could lead to complications in a post-pandemic state if the government stops funding vaccine production efforts.

Pfizer is currently contracted to produce a total of 300 million doses in regular increments through the end of July 2021 while leveraging U.S.-based manufacturing capacity to produce in bulk.