Reports of excessive price demands for the Biontech / Pfizer vaccine came recently.
Now founder Ugur Sahin is reacting.
And rejects the allegations.
Update from February 20, 9:30
a.m.: Ugur Sahin from Biontech has reacted to the reports on excessive price demands for the corona vaccine developed with the US manufacturer Pfizer
(see first report)
.
The founder of the Mainz company rejected the allegations.
A price model was calculated for the industrialized countries in July, Sahin told
Bild
.
“The prices were between 30 and 15 euros, depending on the order quantity,” he said.
“On July 22nd, we signed the US contract based on the new parameters, from which the $ 19.50 was evident.
All industrialized countries then received this price model. "
There were a large number of “unknowns” in pricing, argues Sahin.
The corona vaccine was initially only produced in small doses for clinical studies.
At the time, costs of 1.5 million euros were incurred for 2000 cans.
“The infrastructure for mass production didn't exist.
At the time, we simply did not know how production could be scaled exactly, what exactly the studies with regard to the mRNA dosage would reveal and how the production processes and costs would be exactly. ”“ Large production like the Marburg plant was not in either View, ”says Sahin.
"When we knew how to cut costs and build scale, we were able to create a new offer together with Pfizer in no time - less than three weeks later."
Biontech / Pfizer: Corona vaccine is reported to have originally been significantly more expensive
First report from February 19, 10:40 p.m .:
Mainz - A dose of the coronavirus vaccine from the manufacturer Pfizer / Biontech should originally have cost 54.08 euros.
According to information from the
NDR
,
WDR
and the
Süddeutsche Zeitung
, it was in the first offer made by the pharmaceutical companies to the EU.
The price would have been more than twenty times as expensive as a dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
After intensive negotiations, the final price is said to have been 15.50 euros per dose.
Back in December, a Belgian politician accidentally revealed the prices of various vaccines in a tweet.
Accordingly, the Biontech vaccine only cost twelve euros per dose.
Curevac from Tübingen asked for ten euros, Sanofi from France 7.56 euros and AstraZeneca, the vaccine that is currently making headlines due to potential side effects, only 1.78 euros per dose.
For the drug from the US company Moderna, the overall highest price was given at 18 dollars, for the US company Johnson & Johnson 8.50 dollars.
Coronavirus vaccination: Biontech justified the price based on the benefit
Biontech had advertised the offer as particularly generous.
No other industrialized country in the world has been offered a higher percentage discount.
Biontech also justified the price insofar as it was not based on how much one would have spent on research and development, but on how necessary and useful a new drug is from a medical point of view.
This reasoning is quite common for pharmaceutical companies.
If you think this calculation through to the end, you would have come up with an even higher price, which "would be inappropriate during a global pandemic *", as the media quoted the offer.
According to the media, the chairwoman of the Drug Commission of the German Medical Association, Wolf Dieter Ludwig, said of the offer: "I think the price is dubious." He sees it as a pursuit of profit that is in no way justified during the corona crisis.
It now seems understandable that some EU countries were reluctant to use the Biontech vaccine.
With regard to the EU, Ludwig says: "I think it was right to hesitate at such a high price."
Coronavirus vaccine development received government funding.
In addition, the high price came as a surprise against the background of government subsidies of several hundred million euros that Biontech had received since it was founded to set up the company.
In summer 2020, a further 375 million euros from the Federal Ministry of Research followed specifically for mRNA-based vaccine * development.
The other manufacturers of coronavirus vaccines * also received support from various sources with amounts in the millions and billions.
Biontech boss Ugur Sahin did not answer an interview request. A company spokeswoman merely stated that vaccine prices “depend on various factors”. It lies “within a certain range for all countries with higher incomes”. So far, however, the company has not made any profits. But if you make profits from the sale of the Covid-19 vaccine, you want to "reinvest it in the further development of this technology". Pfizer relied on confidential agreements and talks with governments. The EU Commission did not want to do anything either.
* Merkur.de is part of the Ippen-Digital network.