Pfizer mulls hiking US COVID vaccine price ~4 times after government program ends

Justin Sullivan

Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) anticipates to raise the price of its COVID vaccine to about four times the current price, to ~$110 to $130 per dose after the U.S. government's current purchase plan ends, Reuters reported citing a Pfizer executive Angela Lukin.

Lukin — who serves as Global Primary Care & U.S. President at Pfizer, as per her Linkedin page — said she expects the COVID shot would be made available at no cost to people who have private insurance or government paid insurance, the report added.

The COVID vaccine is currently given for free to all by the government. The U.S. government pays ~$30 per dose to Pfizer and BioNTech (NASDAQ:BNTX) for the vaccine, sold as Comirnaty.

The report added that Wall Street was expecting price hikes because of weaker demand for COVID vaccines.

Earlier this week it was reported that that even the U.S. rollout of updated COVID vaccines targeting the Omicron subvariant were off to a slow start.

In 2023, the U.S. market is expected to move towards private insurance after the U.S. public health emergency ends, the Reuters report added.

The World Health Organization (WHO) however, has reiterated that COVID-19 remains a global health emergency.