Pharmaceutical companies prepare to reap billions of dollars from the enhanced jabs of the Covid virus | Pharmaceutical industry

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Pharmaceutical companies Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna are preparing to make billions of dollars from booster use of Covid-19 this fall, with analysts estimating that sales could rival the $6 billion-a-year market for seasonal flu vaccines.

The UK government is expected to announce details of its booster program in the coming days, based on official advice from the Joint Commission on Immunization and Immunization, but Health Minister Sajid Javid has suggested a dose could be offered for over 50 years. With winter flu vaccinations.

The UK is expected to join France and Germany in providing follow-up doses from September. On Friday, US authorities approved a third dose for those with weakened immune systems, and Israel and Chile began giving boosters to their elderly citizens.

However, health experts warn that many more people around the world will die of Covid if Western countries prioritize boosters for their own people rather than share them with the rest of the world.

Moderna, Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech have already signed more than $72 billion (£52 billion) in sales for this year alone, in deals to supply follow-up shots and also the first two doses for those first vaccinated at less. rich countries.

Analysts polled by data group Refinitiv expected revenue of more than $6.6 billion from Pfizer/BioNTech and $7.6 billion for Moderna in 2023, mostly from boosted sales. They expect the annual market to eventually stabilize at around $5 billion or higher, as additional drug companies compete for those sales.

It will likely include Maryland-based Novavax, which has just struck a deal with the European Union to supply up to 200 million doses of its vaccine, which has not yet been approved by the European Union’s drug regulator. France’s Sanofi and UK drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline are also working on a vaccine that they hope will be ready by the end of the year.

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British company AstraZeneca and US company Johnson & Johnson are gathering more data about their vaccine boosters. New methods from Germany’s Novavax, Sanofi and CureVac can also be used as boosters, assuming they are approved by regulators.

“A lot of these companies aren’t in the market yet. I think within a year, all of these companies will have enhanced strategies,” said Damien Conover, Health Care Analyst at Morningstar.

Punches allowed a return to a more normal life in Western countries, but also greatly benefited their makers.

The market capitalization of Nasdaq-listed BioNTech, which was a small German drug developer before the pandemic, has risen to $92 billion, making it the 10 most valuable German companies, while Massachusetts-based Moderna made its first-ever profit on the back of its vaccine.

Vaccine makers argue that booster doses are needed because of evidence of waning antibody levels after six months and higher infection rates in countries hit by the delta variant.

But the programs are controversial. The World Health Organization has called for all boosters to be halted until the end of September, saying supplies must be protected for poor countries that have not yet vaccinated large numbers of citizens.

Professor Sir Andrew Pollard, chair of the Oxford Vaccine Group, and Seth Berkeley, CEO of the Gavi Vaccine Alliance, describe this as a “key moment for decision makers”.

“A large-scale reinforcement in one rich country would send a signal around the world that reinforcements are needed everywhere,” they wrote in the Guardian. “This will suck many doses of the vaccine out of the system, and a lot of people will die because they didn’t get a chance to get a single dose.”

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