Your trusted source

Pfizer raised the price of its Covid-19 vaccine by more than a quarter and Moderna by more than a tenth in the latest EU supply contracts as Europe battled supply disruptions and concerns about side effects from rival products, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.

The terms of the deals, struck this year for a total of up to 2.1bn shots until 2023, were renegotiated after phase 3 trial data showed their messenger ribonucleic acid vaccines had higher efficacy rates than cheaper shots developed by Oxford/AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson.

The new price for a Pfizer shot was €19.50 against €15.50 previously, according to portions of the contracts seen by the Financial Times.

The price of a Moderna jab was $25.50 a dose, the contracts show, up from what people familiar with the matter said was about €19 ($22.60) in the first procurement deal but lower than a previously agreed $28.50 because the order had grown, according to one official close to the negotiations.

The official said the companies had capitalised on their market power and deployed the “usual pharma rhetoric . . . Vaccines work so they increased the ‘value’.”

Officials said the commission and EU governments had agreed to pay a higher price to secure proved supplies from European manufacturing plants. The new Pfizer price is the same as that agreed earlier in the year on an advance of 10m doses, officials said.