Coronavirus vaccine: Pfizer plans tiered pricing in India, free shots in Africa

The CEO of Pfizer, Albert Bourla, has said that the company will have tiered pricing for the middle-income countries, including India.

Moneycontrol News

Dec 9, 2020 / 02:43 PM IST

A person walks past the Pfizer Headquarters building in the Manhattan borough of New York City. (Image: Reuters)

Pfizer Inc has decided to price its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, BNT162b2 COVID-19, on the basis of the GDP of the country. The Chief Executive Officer of the American pharmaceutical firm, Albert Bourla, has said the company will have tiered pricing for the middle-income countries, including India.

At a press conference organised by the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations, Bourla said the firm will give the vaccine free in Africa, reported Business Today.

The COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech was first approved by Britain on December 2. A week after the approval, the first shot was administered on December 8 to Margaret Keenan, a 90-year-old woman from Northern Ireland. An early riser, Keenan received the jab at her local hospital in Coventry, central England, a week before she turns 91.

Pfizer has applied for emergency use authorisation of its coronavirus vaccine in India. The firm is the first to do so in a country with the world's second-highest number of infections.

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COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

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