The aim is to prevent the virus from clogging up the healthcare system. Countries which vaccinated all the citizens they could(e.g. Israel) already achieved that.
One dose of the Pfizer vaccine costs €16, while AstraZeneca's is less than €3. This is affordable by any measure.
The EU's paying around 2 euro per dose of AstraZeneca (and about 15 euro per dose of Pfizer). That's on the low end, but no-one's really paying more than twice that. And those vaccines have the great benefit that there is actual evidence that they do something.
Even the expensive COVID vaccines are an absolute bargain compared to all the costs associated with not having them (economic, social, health, geopolitical...).
The EU has just created a huge problem for themselves (which will result in extra people dying) by insisting on paying 2 dollars per dose for the AZ vaccine instead of 3 dollars or whatever. If you do the maths on that, it’s hard to find a rational or humane justification for trying to “save money” this way.
Israel by contrast decided to pay double the list price for their vaccines, and half their population is now vaccinated.
The main problem with the Pfizer vaccine is that there is not enough of it. The government of my country gladly orders any Pfizer doses that are offered, but it's not enough. People here generally favor the Pfizer vaccine over the AstraZeneca vaccine, given all the bad press of the latter. Pfizer is very well known and desirable, that's not the problem.
AstraZeneca on the other hand promised plentiful quantities, and my country made plans based on those promises, but AstraZeneca failed to deliver. I guess the EU feels screwed over.
The EU was super happy on the negociations on the vaccine prices with AstraZeneca. They claimed that the grouped buy was a major reason why they were able to get such a cheap price (Around $2.15 / dose). The US and UK pays around $3 to $4 / dose.
To compare, South Africa seems to be paying $5.25 to AstraZeneca. Pfizer vaccine costs $14.70/dose and Moderna $18. You can see why the EU is so dependent on AstraZeneca. It's all about injecting the cheapest vaccine as fast as possible.
Basically, the EU got a super heavy discount on the vaccine price. This also mean that they are last on the line for deliveries. In times of hardship, any sensible business will satisfy clients who pay a significant premium for their product before delivering the noisy client that negociates super harshly and can't stop complaining about your product.
Ursula von der Leyen needs to look herself in the mirror for the supposed "vaccine delivery issues". She willingly looked for the cheapest provider. When you imperatively need a product to be delivered and to work, you pay a premium for it, you don't look to reduce your costs as much as possible.
I can't remember exact values but my guess is this friction comes from the price point.
AZ was negotiated at something like less than 2 euros per shot for EU markets, and the Pfizer contracts varied wildly for different countries but it was negotiated at about 15 euros per shot for EU.
With my cynical hat on if you are having to vaccinate millions that order of magnitude difference probably matters.
What I haven't seen anyone discuss at the EC level is what would be the maths of just paying premium Israel prices for the Pfizer vaccine?
Would the economic benefits of get out of this mess as quickly as possible outweigh the extra euros per shot spent on vaccination. My guess is it would likely pay off but then again I am not a European Commissioner.
The prices the EU, at least, is paying are public. IIRC they range from about 2 eur for AZ to about 30 for the MRNAs.
Today, there are no particularly effective treatments. Monoclonal antibodies might do something, and cost a few thousand quid, but you wouldn’t want to be relying on them as an alternative to a vaccine.
that sounds incredibly ambitious (if not unrealistic) to me, how is that supposed to work? Currently, there's only a single vaccine that's probably going to hit the market in Europe soon, and that's the Biontech/Pfizer one. They said they'll have 50 million doses available in December, but that's for both the US as well as the EU and the UK (which means 25 million people can get vaccinated in total). How is that possibly enough for health-care workers and care-home residents in the UK as well as people aged 80 or over?
And it's going to be a similar situation in January and February, sure Bntch/Pfizer will produce a decent amount of vaccines specifically for the European market in Belgium and Germany, but again that's going to be hardly enough for everyone over the age of 18 in the UK - especially given the fact that those doses will have to be shared with all other European nations.
It is also quite cheap, which as well as needing less refrigeration boggles my mind why the EU sat on their hands for 3 months trying to negotiate down an already cheap cost.
$140 billion to vaccinate the world is not a large cost, and many nations will choose (have chosen) their own solutions, for the remaining, perhaps $60bn, that's not a large amount for developed nations to pay compared to the costs of reduced trade and potential further mutations, that's $60-$100 per person in developed countries in cash, or more likely however countries want to amortise that.
More importantly for a vaccine that is sold at cost, the regional price that the IA got was $3 per dose, the commission stepped in trying to get it down to $2.
Israel is paying $30 for its doses of the Pfizer vaccine and likely a similar amount for Moderna.
If the EU would’ve paid as much as Israel is for 500M doses it would only cost them 15 billion $. That is peanuts in the grand scheme of things, the UK spent 16 billion a month to cover furlough payments ffs...
I agree on the worth part. I could afford to spend hundreds of euros to go to a nearby country and get an EU-approved vaccine months ago. Overall I estimate those hundreds of euros got me vaccinated about six months earlier than I would be in my own country.
During that time months ago one of our politicians came out and said that thousands of my fellow citizens that did the same were "wasting money on something that only costs €10", but that means nothing when you can't get to that something that only costs €10.
Wouldn't AstraZeneca be still required to deliver the orders at the price that it was agreed?
IIRC, most of the EU, has already ordered enough vaccines for the whole population.
The fact that you've pointed out, still doesn't still well with me though. If most developed countries will already have been vaccinated, are they trying to take the profit from developing economies instead?
> AstraZeneca is one of the shining stars of the pandemic. Not only did it produce a vaccine where other big players failed, the UK-Swedish company has pledged to sell it at cost until it is able to declare the pandemic over.
If countries still can't afford it they are being given away
Israel paid a LOT more for the vaccine to ensure early supply.
They are also tiny - a lot smaller than you might think, they are not really hogging all that much supply in terms of absolute numbers.
And finally they agreed to be the research study for the world, so what they are doing does have value, even for your parents in the EU. In particular they will answer the question: If you immunize everyone does COVID stop?
One dose of the Pfizer vaccine costs €16, while AstraZeneca's is less than €3. This is affordable by any measure.
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