- Pfizer executives told investors that there was a “significant opportunity” to raise the price of their vaccine.
- They said that to deal with emerging variants of COVID, people may need a third dose of the vaccine.
- Regular annual booster jabs against COVID can also become routine.
- See more stories on the Insider business page.
Pfizer executives informed the company’s investors of a “significant opportunity” to raise prices for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
Speaking at the Barclays Global Healthcare virtual conference last week, two senior Pfizer employees – CFO Frank D’Amelio and Chuck Triano, senior vice president of investor relations – said there would be a chance for Pfizer to raise vaccine prices when COVID moves from a pandemic state to an endemic situation and the virus circulates continuously in pockets around the globe.
“If you look at how current demand and prices are being driven, it is clear that they are not being driven by what I will call normal market conditions or normal market forces … it was driven by the pandemic state that we were in the needs of governments in securing doses from various vaccine suppliers, “said D’Amelio.
He added that with the resumption of “normal market conditions” over time, there would be a chance for the company to take advantage of opportunities from “a demand … and price perspective”.
—Lee Fang (@lhfang) March 15, 2021
The two added that to stay protected, people may need a third dose of the vaccine to boost immunity and effectiveness against emerging variants of COVID.
In addition to regular annual boosters, this vaccination cycle can become part of the new normal.
“We believe it is increasingly likely that an annual revaccination will occur,” said D’Amelio, noting that the company did not see the resulting pandemic or vaccination campaigns as a “single event”.
The company is planning to accelerate the number of vaccine doses it can deliver by the end of July, increasing production capacity and the supply chain.
D’Amelio said that Pfizer should initially deliver 100 million doses of the vaccine to the United States government by the end of March. The company is now on track to deliver 120 million doses by the end of the month and 200 million doses by May.
“For the whole year, we had originally said that we thought we could do 1.3 billion doses. Now we have 2 billion doses. And, obviously, we are working to improve that number as well,” he said.