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.
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.
People have way undervalued vaccines. The EU was haggling to get AZ down from like $5 to $2 when the cost of having someone off work for another couple of months is more $5000.
They did still pay 370M eur to them upfront + 660M eur in grants for R&D through Horizon 2020. 1B eur client can afford to be a bit noisy.
All in all AZ vaccine is not that significant for the EU anyway - so far the administered doses were about 80% Pfizer. And if you look at the at-risk population (65+) it's probably even higher
A cursory Google search implies that the EU did indeed invest quite a lot of money on the AZ vaccine roll out, mid-August, after it had already entered trials which had been part-funded by the UK government months earlier.
The EU investment appears to amount to a deposit on actual vaccine doses, and a sum to ensure that dose costs are kept at cost until the pandemic is over - rather than a support of the development itself, which appears to have mostly born by AZ itself, the UK government and Oxford university. The UK has since spent billions (about £3Bn?) on AZ Vaccine procurement, a figure which dwarfs the EU's spend on the same (I think it's something like EUR360M?).
As much as I dislike politics and am disgusted by some of the costs - especially around PPEs last year (which seems to have been much abused) - I find it easier to believe that there was a lot of panicked flailing and a gamble on vaccines as a way out of this mess that would allow the UK to get started back up ASAP, which they're now reaping, rather than using the current mess as a distractionary political football.
Yes, but the GDP of the EU is $19 trillion, the GDP of Israel is $350 billion, that’s 1/50th of the population and 1/54th of the GDP.
While I’m aware that things don’t scale the same, and that currently the supply chain has its own hard restrictions on production you can’t argue that paying more won’t allow you to ramp up production faster, this is also what the UK did.
The EU could’ve allocated much more funding and ordered much more doses of both approved vaccines and vaccine candidates they haven’t they’ve put most of the eggs in the AZ basket and then tried to haggle on the price of the cheapest vaccine sold at cost.
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 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 think the EU even today is still boasting about how they saved a few euros on the vaccines. Such an great deal, when someone else pays for the consequences.
This is false. The €336m was a down payment to AZ for 400m doses, not funding for development. It was agreed in August after protracted negotiations as the EU demanded a lower price.
They work, but at least AZ is working hard to NOT deliver vaccines to EU. (and sending those manufactured in EU to the UK).
Remember when Italians found 15M vaccines at the factory?
I don't know why AZ representatives aren't prosecuted for such behavior of the company.
So I think it is a good call to wait for the contract to end.
BTW. Work at ~72%, mRNAs are at ~91%. What would you choose if you had both at the table? And what would you choose if you have the 91% at the table and 72% one in the other room?
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 problem is that this option is to buy AZ's current vaccine that have a high probability of being ineffective in 18 months. EU is not saying that it won't buy from AZ, but as of now it's not well spent money to buy their current one to be delivered in 18 months. By then all companies will have new better vaccines and the EU would have to fork up a shitload of money on the new AZ vaccine and just write the old of as another loss while the AZ execs get another fat bonus paid by the EU citizens.
Dunno what they'll cost in the US, but the EU price list was leaked and it's not astronomical. 2 EUR - 18 EUR/dose. Administration costs will be higher than that.
We have at least 2 interchangeable vaccines on the market right now, and likely more on the way. Competition should keep costs down like a generic drug.
Perhaps you can point to what in particular the UK has done wrong on this vaccine issue.
With the EU introducing export controls against existing (and actually binding) vaccine contracts and now threatening war time-esque controls over production and intellectual property rights of private pharma companies, it is not AstraZeneca that this will cost big, actions like these are much much bigger than uk vs EU
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.
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.
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