Investors Lobby Pharma for Affordable COVID-19 Vaccines, Treatments

A group of pharma industry investors is pressing several leading drugmakers to make their COVID-19 treatments and vaccines both affordable and accessible.

Specifically targeted by the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility are six companies: Eli Lilly, Gilead Sciences, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Pfizer and Regeneron. Shareholder resolutions have been filed “to learn how the companies will price COVID medicine developed with public monies,” the investor group said.

The investor group sent letters to 17 pharma companies in August with similar requests.

“Pharma companies will face significant reputational and legal risks if they are even remotely seen to be profiteering from this deadly pandemic,” said Lauren Compere of Boston Common Asset Management, a member of the investor group. “In particular, those companies that have accepted taxpayer dollars for R&D will come under heightened scrutiny. These proposals are meant to help these companies get ahead of these risks and, in the process, restore the trust of the public and other stakeholders.”

Some companies are taking steps in respond to the calls for affordability and increased access for their COVID-19 products. On Oct. 8, Lilly announced that it had made an agreement with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation “to facilitate access to future Lilly therapeutic antibodies under development for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19… to benefit low- and middle-income countries.”

The international medical aid group Doctors Without Borders previously called on Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline to make their COVID-19 vaccine available at cost once approved, when the companies signed a contract with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, to supply 200 million doses of their vaccine for the World Health Organization’s COVAX initiative (DID, Oct. 30). — Martin Berman-Gorvine