The business of vaccines against covid hits a ceiling | Pfizer and Janssen forecast drops in their turnover in 2022

The golden age for covid-19 vaccine manufacturers seems to be coming to an end. With almost 65% of the world population inoculated with at least one dose of the drug, the drop in demand is already noticeable in the forecasts of large pharmaceutical companies, which during 2021 doubled the profits of the entire sector in years prior to the pandemic.

And it is that Pfizer, BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca y Johnson & Johnson They closed the last year with 65,600 million euros invoiced thanks to the sale of vials of the coronavirus vaccine, according to reports The country. Some numbers that are far from those expected for this 2022. Pfizer estimates that during 2022 it will register sales of 32,000 million dollars only for the sale of its vaccine while the data obtained the previous year was 36,781 million.

For its part, Johnson & Johnson, the company in charge of manufacturing the Janssen vaccine announced this Tuesday a net profit of 5,149 million dollars in the first quarter of 2022, 16.9% less than the 6,197 million in the same period of the previous year. Thus, Johnson & Johnson has reduced its global revenue prospects for 2022 by around one billion dollars.

The American multinational will also stop offering its prospects for the sale of its vaccine against covid-19 due to the “global surplus of supply and the uncertainty of demand”, although it has reported that in the first months of the year it pocketed 457 million dollars from the sale of their vials.

Poland will not accept or pay for more doses

The Polish Minister of Health, Adam Niedzielski, announced this Tuesday that Poland will not accept or pay for more doses of the covid-19 vaccine. “At the end of last week we made use of the force majeure clause and informed both the European Comission As the main producer of vaccines we refuse to accept these vaccines for the time being and we also refuse to pay”, explained the member of the Polish Executive.

The refusal of the Polish Government to continue acquiring vials anticipates, in the words of the head of Health, “a legal conflict that is already taking place.” The cause: Poland cannot directly terminate the contract for the supply of vaccines, since the parties to the contracts are the European Commission and the manufacturers of the vaccines.

The value of the contract for the supply of vaccines to Poland, whose largest supplier is Pfizer, until the end of 2023 amounts to more than 6,000 million zloty, about 1,400 million dollars, of which more than 2,000 million correspond to the supply in 2022, according to pick up Reuters.

The country has recorded a lower acceptance of vaccines than most of the European Union. Specifically, 59% of the population has been vaccinated with two doses and 31% has received a booster vaccine. While, in spain, 82.3% of the total population has the double dose. This has generated a surplus of vials in Poland, some of which have already been sold or donated to other countries.

–