NYT "Modern who pursues only profit, neglects exporting vaccines to poor countries"

American pharmaceutical company Moderna is exporting most of its COVID-19 vaccine to rich countries and neglecting poor countries.

Airfinity, a vaccine-related data company, said Moderna had the largest share of vaccines supplied to wealthy countries among the COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers.

Of the 23 countries, including the European Union, where information on individual purchase agreements with Moderna was made public, not one was a low-income country.

Vaccines exported to countries classified as low-income countries by the World Bank also amounted to only 900,000 doses.

On the other hand, the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine delivered to low-income countries has 8.4 million doses, more than nine times that of Moderna.

Moderna is also not keeping its promise with COVAX, a vaccine joint purchase project led by the World Health Organization.

In May, Moderna reached an agreement with Kovax to supply up to 34 million doses of the vaccine within the year.

However, so far, with less than two months left of this year, not even a single episode has been sent.

To date, tens of millions of CoVax's Moderna vaccines have been donated by the US federal government.

Moderna's tyranny was also confirmed in middle-income countries.

They are unilaterally delaying the supply schedule and selling vaccines at a higher price than developed countries.

Moderna has set prices for a single dose of the vaccine at $15-16.50 in the United States and $22.60-25.50 in the European Union.

However, in upper-middle-income countries such as Botswana, Thailand and Colombia, it turns out that they receive between $27 and $30.

Tom Frieden, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has criticized Moderna for acting as if it had no responsibility other than maximizing return on investment.

Last year, Moderna received about 1.5 trillion won in US dollars from the US federal government for vaccine research and clinical trials.

Moderna Chief Executive Stefan Bansel said in an interview with The New York Times that "it is sad that Moderna's vaccine is not available to many people in poor countries," but said it was not a situation the company had under its control.