AstraZeneca is planning to earn profit from the Covid vaccination
AstraZeneca has begun to withdraw its COVID-19 vaccination from nations that get it on a non-profit basis.
According to the pharmaceutical giant, a spate of for-profit arrangements have been planned for next year, and the vaccine is projected to result in a tiny profit.
The business had stated that it would only begin to profit from the vaccine after COVID-19 was no longer considered a pandemic. The company’s CEO, Pascal Soriot, stated that the sickness was becoming more prevalent. Poorer countries will continue to receive the vaccine on a non-profit basis. AstraZeneca plans to have given 250 million doses of its vaccine to the Covax initiative for poor nations by the end of the year.
Other vaccine makers, such as Pfizer and Moderna, have made money from their products.
A standard profit margin in the pharmaceutical sector is around 20%, but Mr. Soriot claimed that AstraZeneca, which charges roughly $5 per injection for the Covid vaccination at cost pricing, would not be generating that much money.
However, Nick Dearden, director of the advocacy organisation Global Justice Now, said AstraZeneca’s choice to begin benefiting from the vaccine while the coronavirus epidemic was still ongoing “shows the total foolishness of handing over publicly-funded science to big pharma.”
AstraZeneca and its sub-licensees had delivered 1.5 billion doses by the end of September.
The company recorded $25.4 billion (£19 billion) in revenue for the first nine months of the year, but claimed its overall profit margins had decreased, owing in part to providing the Covid-19 vaccine at cost pricing.
AstraZeneca said a jump in income from the Covid-19 vaccination in the fourth quarter would offset costs associated with developing a Covid-19 antibody treatment while maintaining its total profit prediction for the year.
On Friday, shares of the pharmaceutical company fell more than 4%.
Meanwhile, another company that produced a Covid vaccine, Johnson & Johnson, announced on Friday that it will separate its consumer healthcare division, which includes Baby Powder and Listerine, from its medicine and medical device operations…………………
