Pfizer is one of the first companies to come out with a vaccine for the coronavirus. The company has since sold its vaccine all over the world. And they’ve been earning quite a sum from their sales. According to their earnings report, the company has earned $3.5 Billion alone in the first three months of this year. The company announced that they expect around $25 billion in total revenue for this year.
Now one can argue that the company deserves the profit it has gained. Their vaccine has been helping people all over the world. You can’t estimate how many people might have been saved by a timely administration of the vaccine. But other vaccine manufacturers never had profit in their minds, with Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca both selling their vaccine on a nonprofit during the pandemic.
The company’s forecast for last year was $15 billion but its first-quarter 2021 revenue alone totaled to be around $14.6 Billion. This is around a 45 percent increase compared to last year and it’s safe to say that it’s all because of their vaccine. Many lawmakers have expressed concerns that selling the vaccine for profit may lead to price gouging when the pandemic is over.
Anyways, I guess all the profits are being used to focus on manufacturing more doses as the company announced that they expect to have the capacity to manufacture at least 2.5 billion doses in 2021 and an additional 3 billion in 2022. According to CEO Albert Bourla, “Based on what we’ve seen, we believe that a durable demand for our COVID-19 vaccine — similar to that of the flu vaccines — is a likely outcome”. The company is also planning to file for full FDA approval at the end of this month.
CEO Bourla has assured everyone the company is striving to commit to the global availability of its COVID 19 vaccine. He said that “It is our hope that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine will continue to have a global impact by helping to get the devastating pandemic under control and helping economies around the world not only open — but stay open — creating a scenario in which Pfizer can continue to be both a leader and a beneficiary”.
However, as of now the vast majority of mRNA vaccines by Pfizer have been reserved by wealthy countries. Critics expect Pfizer to do more even though the company has pledged to give millions of doses to the World Health Organization.
As of Monday, this week, Pfizer and its partner, BioNtech have shipped around 430 million doses of the vaccine to 91 countries and territories around the globe.
