At the end of December 2020, vaccination against COVID-19 began in the European Union, as in the United Kingdom and the United States. This is good news, and we all hope that vaccines will be effective and safe. It is also very positive that, at least in all EU countries, vaccination has started simultaneously. But there are other not-so-positive aspects, such as price and the ability to scale production, that will make millions of people unable to get vaccinated in 2021.
In the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic situation, governments had a great opportunity to change the patent model as a way to finance research and set drug prices, promoting a model with open and cooperative research, non-exclusive licenses, with technology transfer between research and manufacturing centers, without monopolies, considering vaccines and medicines a public good, and guaranteeing access for all people all over the world. However, they have once again ceded power to the big pharmaceutical industry. Thus, the vaccines that are being developed and that are beginning to be used, have the price that the companies set, although it is much more expensive than their manufacturing cost, and although the research and development has been financed largely with funds and public aid.
Based on the work of Zoltan Kis et al, from Imperial College London (1, 2) we can estimate the production cost of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine (raw materials, consumables, labor, etc.) at $ 0.61 per dose. To calculate the price per dose, it would be necessary to add the allocation of research costs financed directly by the companies (which we can estimate at $ 700 million recoverable in 20 years), from which we should deduct the significant public aid (3). In addition, for a production of 1.2 billion doses per year, we can estimate the annual costs in equipment, vial preparation and packaging ($ 50 million); distribution and administration costs ($ 130 million); and a 5% industrial profit which should be added to calculate price. The total cost for 1.2 billion doses would be around $ 1 billion. The price per dose would be $ 0.83, equivalent to € 0.68. Apparently, the sale price for the EU is € 12 / dose (4), 1,765% above the fair price. At its current price, Pfizer-BioNTech would earn € 14.4 billion in the first year, when actual total costs would only amount to € 815 million, obtaining an “exceptional” profit of € 13.585 billion. It is possible that these estimates are not correct, so it would be very important that the European Commission, which must know in detail the exact data of all these costs, make them public.
In addition, the patent model creates a funnel and does not allow vaccines that are proven to be effective and safe, to be manufactured in all the appropriate factories all over the world, increasing production on a large scale. If governments agreed to mandatory technology transfer, vaccines could be manufactured so that the entire world population would be vaccinated by 2021, and at cost. With the current model, some countries will start vaccinating in mid-2021 and it will take several years to complete vaccination. The very insufficient COVAX mechanism expects to be able to deliver vaccines to 20% of the population of low-income countries at the end of 2021. The WHO C-TAP mechanism, which proposed voluntary sharing of technology, was neglected by large companies and the most high-income countries. As a consequence, each country is struggling to get enough vaccines for its population. But while in high-income countries we already have three vaccines reserved for each person, in low- and middle-income countries they do not know when they will be able to start vaccinating and how many people will receive vaccines. If we consider health a human right this is an unacceptable and immoral inequality.
It is important that European governments change their pharmaceutical policy to meet the needs of all people, at the lowest possible cost. The current model of drug and vaccine patents kills; and it's not an overstatement.
For this reason, a group of European citizens has promoted a European Citizens' Initiative, “Rigth2Cure”, to ask the European Commission for COVID vaccines to be universal, and for medicines to be accessible to all people who need them, all over the world. Join and support this initiative and promote its dissemination. https://noprofitonpandemic.eu/es/
(1) Zoltan Kis et al.
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-393X/9/1/3
(2) Zoltan Kis et al.
https://aiche.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/amp2.10060
(3) Fortune. Germany support R&D Pfizer vaccine
https://fortune.com/2020/11/09/pfizer-vaccine-funding-warp-speed-germany/
(4) The Guardian. Prices paid by the EU for COVID vaccines
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario