Pfizer Inc.’s chief executive said that low- and middle-income countries had opted not to order the company’s COVID-19 shot, in a letter posted online after the Biden administration said it supported waiving patents to expand global access to vaccines.
“We reached out to all nations asking them to place orders so we could allocate doses for them,” Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla said in a letter addressed to Pfizer employees. “In reality, the high-income countries reserved most of the doses. I became personally concerned with that and I reached out to many heads of middle/low-income countries by letter, phone and even text to urge them to reserve doses because the supply was limited.”
Most low- and middle-income countries he contacted decided to place orders with other vaccine makers either because the underlying technology used in Pfizer’s shot was still untested, or there were local production options available, Bourla wrote.
He said some countries didn’t ever approve the vaccine, which Pfizer developed with its partner German partner BioNTech SE.
On Wednesday, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said the U.S. would support efforts to reach a deal on waiving intellectual property protections for COVID-19 vaccines, in a reversal of longstanding policy. Proponents of the move say it could expand access, though critics say there is no current capacity to begin producing cheaper versions of vaccines like the one made by Pfizer.
Bourla said in the letter that Pfizer and BioNTech use a tiered pricing model for their vaccine. Middle-income countries are asked to pay half what the highest-income nations do, while low-income countries are offered the shot at cost. Such tiered pricing was pioneered by Gilead Sciences Inc. as it commercialized its HIV drugs.
Pfizer and BioNtech are on track to deliver 3 billion doses this year to more than 116 countries, Bourla said, and that the 450 million doses delivered to date have been heavily weighted toward higher-income countries that pay the most. In the U.S., the two-dose regimen is priced at $39.
Bourla expects 40% of doses, or more than 1 billion, will go to middle- and low-income countries this year. “We expect the supply balance to weigh in their favor in the second half of 2021,” he said, “and to have virtually enough supply for all in 2022.”
Pfizer will likely be able to deliver 4 billion doses of the vaccine in 2022, Bourla said, “virtually enough supply” for any country in need regardless of income level.
Bourla met virtually with the U.S. trade representative last week. In the letter, he said that such a waiver threatens to disrupt Pfizer’s ability to manufacture the shots at scale given raw materials are in short supply.
“I worry that waiving of patent protection will disincentivize anyone else from taking a big risk,” he said. “The recent rhetoric will not discourage us from continuing investing in science.”
Separately, the U.S. trade chief held a meeting with AstraZeneca Plc’s Ruud Dobber, who runs the company’s biopharmaceuticals business unit. The executives argued that the fastest way for the U.S. to help developing countries is to release its own stockpile of vaccines, including the tens of millions of doses of AstraZeneca’s two-shot regimen, which hasn’t yet been authorized for use in the country.
