Now, with hopes for an end of the pandemic on the horizon, three drug companies — Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, are telling investors that they believe COVID-19 will turn into an endemic disease that will require regular booster shots, all translating into more returns on investment.
While the U.S. government has already fully funded the research and development of COVID vaccines to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, apparently that’s not enough: In a quarterly earnings call, Pfizer executives “announced that the company’s coronavirus vaccine was projected to bring in $15 billion this year alone from sales, of which $4 billion would be purely profit”, The Intercept reported.
Meanwhile, Johnson & Johnson told its investors that they could “expect the company to reevaluate the vaccine for ‘pricing that’s much more in line with a commercial opportunity’ when the pandemic is over.”
Early in the pandemic, COVID vaccine makers promised to produce affordable vaccines, but with a caveat: only as long as there was a pandemic.
Now, with hopes for an end of the pandemic on the horizon, three drug companies — Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, are telling investors that they believe COVID-19 will turn into an endemic disease that will require regular booster shots, all translating into more returns on investment.
While the U.S. government has already fully funded the research and development of COVID vaccines to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, apparently that’s not enough: In a quarterly earnings call, Pfizer executives “announced that the company’s coronavirus vaccine was projected to bring in $15 billion this year alone from sales, of which $4 billion would be purely profit”, The Intercept reported.
Meanwhile, Johnson & Johnson told its investors that they could “expect the company to reevaluate the vaccine for ‘pricing that’s much more in line with a commercial opportunity’ when the pandemic is over.”