Vaccines bring in less than 10% revenue of overall sales for pharma companies despite Covid-19

The year 2021 saw the likes of Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and many other pharmaceutical companies sell billions of vaccines – not just for Covid-19 – as more nations around the world approved jabs for various diseases.

Over eight billion doses of the Covid-19 vaccine are said to have been distributed so far since Britain became the first nation in the world to approve the anti-viral shot, but vaccines as a whole have a minor share in the sales of the trillion-dollar pharma industry.

According to a report by Statista, firms are likely to earn $89 billion from vaccines in 2021, which is less than even 10 per cent of the overall sales which is estimated to be around $1.05 trillion. This, however, is still more than what the vaccine segment contributed in 2019 and 2020 — $32.8 billion and $34.1 billion, respectively. The total earnings for the last two years years stood at $918.2 billion and $931 billion, respectively.

Also read: Serum Institute plans to launch Covid vaccine for children in six months

"With more than $175 billion in estimated sales, oncology drugs remain the largest segment within the pharma industry," the report said.

Vaccines, however, are still profitable to these firms.

An analysis has shown that the likes of Pfizer, Moderna and BioNTech coin $1,000 a second from their vaccines.

The companies have sold the vast majority of their doses to rich countries, leaving low-income nations in the lurch, said the People's Vaccine Alliance (PVA), a coalition campaigning for wider access to Covid vaccines, which based its calculations on the firms' own earning reports.

The Alliance estimates that the trio will make pre-tax profits of $34 billion this year, which turns out to be over $1,000 a second, $65,000 a minute or $93.5 million a day.

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