Covid-19: a vaccine at what price?

The treatment developed by Pfizer and BioNTech should cost around 33 euros.

REUTERS / Dado Ruvic / Illustration / File Photo

Text by: RFI Follow

3 min

This is the big question of the moment: when can we get vaccinated against Covid-19?

In Europe, it won't be until the first quarter of next year, the director of the European Center for Disease Control has warned.

Across the Atlantic, the American authorities are talking about a few weeks.

But a second question comes in the wake of the first, that of the cost of vaccination.

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The vaccine developed

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" in preventing Covid-19 infections, has generated a lot of talk and enthusiasm since its announcement on Monday, November 9.

But the one which, among the vaccines under development, will probably be the fastest available on the market, will also be one of the most expensive: the treatment developed by the German and American laboratories should cost 39 dollars, about 33 euros, for the two doses needed.

That said, it would still be half the cost of its direct competitor, the treatment developed by Moderna, also based on this new messenger RNA technology.

On the other hand, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is less affordable than that promised by Johnson & Johnson (10 dollars per dose), and by the English AstraZeneca (4 dollars).

They use more common immunological methods for vaccines.

It is thanks to the amounts of the contracts concluded between certain countries and the laboratories that it is possible to estimate these prices.

Thus, the United States spent nearly two billion dollars to acquire 100 million doses of the treatment developed by Pfizer and BioNTech.

The price, the result of negotiations between laboratories and States

But all this does not say how much a person will have to pay to be vaccinated.

In fact, everything will depend on the contracts concluded by each state with the laboratories.

BioNTech has already stated that the price will be adjusted depending on the countries and regions.

And much lower than market prices.

Problem: in these negotiations, governments have little room for maneuver.

Faced with the health and economic damage caused by Covid-19, there is an urgent need to acquire millions of doses as quickly as possible, and laboratories need to monetize their massive investments in research.

For example, Pfizer and BioNTech treatment must be stored at a temperature of -70 degrees to remain effective.

Storage and transport costs could thus increase the bill.

It will also be necessary to add the cost of the booster shots, if they are necessary for the Covid-19.

For diphtheria, tetanus and polio, for example, you have to be vaccinated again at 25, 45 and 65 years old in France

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• Coronavirus

• Health and medicine