Paris (AFP)
Pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Moderna will increase the price of their anti-Covid vaccine delivered to the EU because they have adapted it to variants, the French Secretary of State for European Affairs said on Monday, confirming information from the Financial Times.
"You have to look at all this rationally, obviously not to be fooled but to have more demanding contracts, with products adapted to variants probably yes, not only for the European Union, for all buyers it will be a little more expensive ", noted Clément Beaune on Radio France Internationale (RFI), without specifying the amount of the increase.
The Pfizer vaccine will drop from 15.5 euros to 19.5 euros and that of Moderna from 19 euros to 21.5 euros, revealed Sunday the British daily Financial Times which consulted the contract concluded with the EU.
"We adapt them, it is requested in the contracts which are being negotiated, to the variants. We also ask that the main part of the production, nearly 300 components of the vaccines, be produced on the European territory", added Clement Beaune.
The rise comes as concern over the Delta variant outbreak mounts and studies have shown that Moderna and Pfizer / BioNTech's vaccines should remain effective against this variant.
The EU's joint vaccine purchasing program provided 330 million doses of the BioNTech / Pfizer vaccine, 100 million of AstraZeneca, 50 million of Moderna and 20 million of Johnson & Johnson.
At the end of July, the Pfizer laboratory planned to sell this year for 33.5 billion dollars (28.23 billion euros) of vaccines against the Covid-19, that is to say much more than the 26 billion dollars (21.91 billion euros) on which the group had counted two months earlier.
Moderna, in May, counted on annual sales of 19.5 billion dollars (16.43 billion euros).
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