Moderna Q4 results: Publicly funded vaccine shouldn’t be “a goldmine for big pharma”
Moderna Q4 results: Publicly funded vaccine shouldn’t be “a goldmine for big pharma”
Release date: 23 February 2023
Responding to Moderna’s Q4 results, Maaza Seyoum, Global South Convenor of the People’s Vaccine Alliance, said:
“Moderna’s revenue in 2022 alone is equivalent to the combined health budgets of 68 countries. Already, the company expects to make more from the vaccine in 2023 than the combined health budgets of 42 countries. Yet, for Moderna, it isn’t enough. The company is planning a huge price hike in the United States and has filed patents that threaten efforts to produce mRNA vaccines in lower-income countries.
“US taxpayers and people all over the world should be furious. Moderna took billions of dollars in public funding for this vaccine. It was built on decades of publicly funded research into mRNA vaccines. And it was developed in partnership with the US National Institutes of Health. This should be the people’s vaccine, available and affordable to everyone, everywhere, not a goldmine for big pharma. “
/Ends
Notes
In its Q4 results, Moderna has reported annual revenue of $19.3 billion and projected 2023 vaccine sales of $5 billion: https://investors.modernatx.com/news/news-details/2023/Moderna-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-and-Fiscal-Year-2022-Financial-Results-and-Provides-Business-Updates/default.aspx
According to data in the World Health Organization’s Global Health Expenditure Database, the bottom 68 countries had a total health expenditure of $19.26 billion in 2020 and the bottom 43 had $5.05 billion: https://apps.who.int/nha/database
The Boston Globe has calculated that the US government has poured $6 billion into Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/04/29/nation/us-government-has-now-given-moderna-6b-vaccine-effort/
The People’s Vaccine Alliance previously calculated that Moderna’s planned vaccine price hike in the US represents a 4,000% mark-up from the estimated cost price: https://peoplesvaccine.org/resources/media-releases/moderna-vaccine-price-hike-would-be-4000-mark-up-above-cost/
Moderna’s patents in South Africa are threatening the future work of the mRNA Technology Transfer Hub, a World Health Organization and Medicines Patent Pool project aiming to share mRNA vaccine technology with producers in fifteen low and middle-income countries, to develop vaccines for COVID-19 and other diseases: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-04/moderna-who-set-for-vaccine-clash-as-patents-threaten-mrna-use.
Media contact
Joe Karp-Sawey, Senior Media Advisor, People’s Vaccine Alliance