Europe To Pay Lower Price For Pfizer COVID Vaccine Than US Tyler Durden Wed, 11/11/2020 - 13:25 Even after the Trump Administration shelled out $2 billion in Operation Warp Speed money to secure 100 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine (don't listen to the MSM when it claims Pfizer hasn't benefited from government money), Europe has still somehow managed to secure a better price as part of a deal reported earlier on Wednesday. Earlier today, Pfizer CEO Dr. Albert Bourla - who was also exposed for dumping a huge quantity of his stock, top-ticking the market - EU agreed to buy up to 300 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, sealing its newfound status as the most advanced, and most promising, vaccine effort in the West. Exploratory talks involving the deal were initially disclosed back in September, but the news of the deal on Wednesday propelled shares higher, even as insiders revealed they were headed for the exits. Meanwhile, Reuters is reporting that under the terms of the EU deal, the per-dose price of the vaccine will be lower than in the US. The bloc will pay less than $19.50 per shot, a senior EU official involved in talks with vaccine makers told Reuters, adding that partly reflected the financial support given by the EU and Germany for the drug's development. The official requested anonymity as the terms of the agreement are confidential. The United States agreed to pay $19.50 per shot for 100 million doses, a smaller volume than the EU. But it has an option to buy a further 500 million under terms to be negotiated separately, and the price it will pay is unclear. BioNTech signalled this week that order size would impact the per-dose price in the developed world and said it would differentiate pricing between countries or regions for its potential vaccine. The EU official said the EU had agreed a price that was closer to $20 than to $10 but declined to give a precise figure. The EU has already signed deals with other vaccine makers including AstraZeneca and Sanofi, and has reportedly been in talks with others, including Novavax and Moderna. Immediately, we see the Pfizer vaccine is still priced higher than in other deals struck by the EU. However, insiders told Reuters that the liability side of the deal (concerning who would be responsible, and for what, if side effects emerge later) was different for the Pfizer deal. The prices agreed by the EU in previous deals with vaccine makers have partly been influenced by liability terms, which could cause large additional legal costs if inoculated people developed unexpected conditions because of the shots. Asked about liability clauses in the Pfizer contract, which have been a bone of contention between EU negotiators and drugmakers, the EU official said conditions were different from those the EU agreed with other companies, and also different from those Pfizer had with the U.S. government. There was "no copy paste" on liability terms from previous contracts, the official said. All of this is contingent on the vaccine being approved by the EU regulator, the European Medicines Agecy, of course. If the past is any guide, more details about the deals and pricing will likely become available soon.