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AstraZeneca will now take profits from Covid-19 vaccine

  • Health
  • Lead News
  • 13 November, 2021 23:17:10

Photo: Collected

News Desk: AstraZeneca has started to move away from providing its Covid-19 vaccine to countries on a not-for-profit basis, BBC reported.

The drugs giant has signed a series of for-profit agreements for next year, and expects to make a modest income from the vaccine, it said.

The company had previously said it would only start to make money from the vaccine when Covid-19 was no longer a pandemic.

 

Its chief executive Pascal Soriot said the disease was becoming endemic.

The jab will continue to be supplied on a not-for-profit basis to poorer countries.

He said the vaccine, which was developed with the University of Oxford, had saved a million lives around the world.

There will be tiered pricing for countries to make sure the vaccine is affordable, Mr Soriot said.

By the end of the year AstraZeneca expects to have supplied 250 million doses of its vaccine to the Covax programme for developing countries.

Other vaccine manufacturers including Pfizer and Moderna have been making profits from their vaccines.

 

A normal profit margin in the drugs industry is about 20%, but Mr Soriot said AstraZeneca, which charges $5 per shot for the Covid vaccine at cost price, would not be making as much profit as that.

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