Washington, (EFE).- The executive director of the Moderna pharmaceutical company, Stéphane Bancel, justified this Wednesday before the US Senate the decision of his company to quadruple the price of the vaccine against covid-19 this year, alleging that the complexity of the market has increased.
His appearance before the Committee on Health, Education, Work and Pensions of the Upper House occurred to give explanations for this planned increase, despite the multimillion-dollar investment received by the US Executive to develop the vaccine.
When the Government of the United States puts an end to the national public health emergency declared by the pandemic, something that is planned this May, the Executive will stop directly purchasing and distributing the doses, and price negotiations will remain in the hands of insurers and government health programs.
Moderna has advanced that at that time it estimates that its vaccine will cost $130.
“The transition from a pandemic market to an endemic one implies greater complexity and risk,” Bancel pointed out, stressing that in the pandemic they only have one client, the government, and in the endemic “there will be 10,000.”
During the pandemic, he added, the US government assumed the risk of excess doses and distribution was much simpler and now a 90% reduction in demand is also expected.
Moderna affirmed on February 15 that its covid-19 vaccine will continue to be available at no cost to insured people, regardless of whether they receive it at doctor’s offices or pharmacies, while for those without or underinsured your patient assistance program will provide it for free.
But the criticism from US congressmen comes from the decision to increase its price after the Executive invested 10,000 million dollars with taxpayer money for the research and development of that vaccine.
Independent Senator Bernie Sanders, chairman of the Senate committee that seated Bancel in this session, recalled that as soon as Moderna began to receive billions of dollars from the federal Administration, the executive director became a “billionaire” from the overnight.
“Will you reconsider your decision to quadruple the price of the vaccine?” he asked.
Bancel was categorical: “We have to deal with complexity. The volume that we had during the pandemic offered us an economy of scale that we will no longer have,” he said, recalling among other points that in exchange for the 1.7 billion dollars received in government loans, Moderna offered a discount of 2.9 billion on the vaccine.
