AstraZeneca pledges to poor countries in pursuit of COVID profits next year | Business News

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AstraZeneca’s CEO (AZ) told Sky News that the company’s decision to seek a modest profit from its COVID vaccine is unlikely to begin until next year.

Pascal Soriot said it was because he still had many doses of the vaccine that he promised to pay for the cost.

AZ announced earlier this month that it would seek a modest future profit from the vaccine in order to fund its new antiviral treatment for COVID.

But Mr Suryot stressed that while some countries would be charged more than the cost of a vaccine, many would not.

Image: Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine has been sold at cost since it first became available Pic: AP

He said, “You have to remember that the orders we receive today will be delivered next year. We still have a lot of no-profit orders to deliver. So they will be delivered next year.

“So you have to think of contagion as if you are already next year. So most of the world at that point will be in a different phase. And we will be in a regional pandemic or a regional pandemic more than we are in a global pandemic.

“But as you know, we will, of course, adapt to all conditions and countries with low purchasing power, and we will be supplied with them without profit or at a very low price, and some will be a little more.”

Soriot insisted he had no regrets that AZ offered the vaccine at cost even though some of its competitors, such as Pfizer and Moderna, had doubled their profits with their COVID vaccine fees.

He continued: “We always knew that some vaccines would be sold at a profit and we made the decision from day one to partner with Oxford and offer this vaccine around the world without profit so that everyone can access it as much as possible.

Photo: COVID vaccine vials from AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Johnson and Johnson, and Sputnik V

“And again, we’ve given over 2 billion doses, 30% of the global supply so far, so it actually really worked. So we always knew that was what we were going to do. So there’s no surprise, so there can be no No regrets – it was our plan the whole time.”

He was speaking as AZ, the largest company in the FTSE 100, officially unveiled The Discovery Center, its new £1 billion research and development facility in Cambridge, which will house around 2,200 scientists.

The centre, which the Prince of Wales will open today, represents the largest single investment AZ has ever made.

It is specifically located in Cambridge to be at the heart of the city’s Life Sciences cluster, close to Royal Papworth and Addenbrooke’s Hospitals, Cancer Research UK and the University of Cambridge Clinical School of Medicine.

The site is referred to in scientific circles as the “Nobel Factory” because it has created more Nobel Prize winners than anywhere else in the world.

Soriot said Arizona spends about $7 billion (£5.3 billion) on research and development annually – a “significant proportion” of which, nearly a third, is deployed in the UK.

“It’s a very big investment that we make every year,” he added.

The opening comes at a very busy time for AZ, which, earlier this year, completed a $39 billion acquisition of rare disease specialist Alexion.

This has moved the company, traditionally known in the industry for its treatments for cancer and heart and respiratory diseases, into a fourth therapeutic area — and now it’s decided, based on the success of its COVID vaccine rollout, to expand to the five and the vaccines as well.

However, when asked if AZ was trying to do too much at once, Suryot insisted that wasn’t the case.

He added: “We have great strengths in oncology and believe we can be one of the world’s three largest oncology companies and possibly even better by 2025.

“We are still doing very well with cardiovascular drugs and biopharmaceuticals in general, and we now have rare diseases and vaccines.

“What we call the Vaccine and Immunotherapy unit you’re really looking at is administering this combination of products to treat or vaccinate people with viral diseases.

“We want to maximize the value of these assets and better manage them.

“Now whether we invest long-term in this area remains to be seen, but there is a lot of synergy across this range of products.”

Soriot noted that AZ just had its first quarter, during which it generated $10 billion in sales.

It’s an important milestone because, when Soriot oversaw AZ’s successful defense against Pfizer’s unwanted takeover approach in 2014, he promised investors that AZ would deliver $40 billion in annual sales by 2023.

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