Pfizer CEO Commits to Fair Pricing for COVID-19 Vaccine

Pfizer’s chairman and CEO Albert Bourla promised on Tuesday that the company will set an ethical price for its COVID-19 vaccine if it gains approval.

“This is not business as usual. Our decision to go into the vaccine or not was not driven at all by a return on investment,” he said. It’s “irrelevant if we are going to get our money back or not.”

Bourla said that while Pfizer could demand a high price for a COVID-19 vaccine and turn a huge profit, it would be unethical to do so, and he vowed to price the vaccine in the same range as others on the market.

“If we were to implement free, open-market principles in pricing the product, we could go to huge prices and sell everything we can manufacture. That will be unethical, I think,” he told participants in the Goldman Sachs’ annual global healthcare conference. “We will not do it … because that's really taking advantage of a situation, and people will not forget if you do that.”

Bourla noted that Pfizer is the only drugmaker to turn down U.S. federal funding, reasoning that accepting government money would require discussions about how to spend it and progress reports that would ultimately slow research.

His commitment to a fair price echoes comments by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Anthony Fauci, who said drugmakers will choose to put ethical price tags on their vaccines (DID, June 11).

Pfizer will not disclose data from its vaccine research until it’s published, Bourla said. The company, which is currently exploring four different vaccine approaches, will soon narrow those down to two candidates. In May, the drugmaker began testing the four potential vaccines in a phase 1/2 study.

“Once we publish the first data, we will speak about that,” he said. “At the end of June, we will have very good visibility of a lot of data.”

Bourla said the company expects to begin large-scale trials in July or August. — James Miessler