Speaker 1: I'm Carol Masser and I'm Tim Stanovik. The cover story
Speaker 1: this week. The Fiser vaccine is a covid fighting wonder
Speaker 1: drug that's already helping tame the pandemic. The distribution of
Speaker 1: the vaccine is also generating some serious ethical dilemmas, though,
Speaker 1: and angering entire countries. Obviously, Fiser's first out of the
Speaker 1: gate status has offered chief executive officer Albert Borla a
Speaker 1: sales opportunity like no other that's put him in position
Speaker 1: to wield enormous power over who gets a shot, when,
Speaker 1: and how much to charge. Well. Fiser's drug is an
Speaker 1: extraordinary accomplishment, exceeding nearly everyone's hopes. The company is now
Speaker 1: doing what pharma does, mass marketing life saving products at
Speaker 1: prices that the market is willing to pay. The company
Speaker 1: expects the vaccine to generate at least fifteen billion dollars
Speaker 1: in revenue. And there's no rule book for how a
Speaker 1: global corporation should behave during a pandemic. Of course, we
Speaker 1: know that, but if there's ever an autopsy of the pandemic,
Speaker 1: essential question might be how a single company came to
Speaker 1: hold such power over so many. Vaccine capitalism Fyser deserves
Speaker 1: every bit of the credit its receiving, but should a
Speaker 1: drug company decide who gets a shot? By Stephanie Baker,
Speaker 1: Cynthia Coons and Vernon Silver, It's not every day that
Speaker 1: a head of government goes to the airport to greet
Speaker 1: a cargo shipment, but the pandemic has changed many things.
Speaker 1: On January tenth, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin netann Yahoo motorcated
Speaker 1: to Ben Gurion International Airport, southeast of Tel Aviv to
Speaker 1: watch a shipment of seven hundred thousand vaccine doses from
Speaker 1: Fyser emerge from a blue and white allal bowing seven
Speaker 1: eighty seven nine. This is a great day for the
Speaker 1: State of Israel, with a huge shipment that has arrived,
Speaker 1: Netanyahoo said, exuding a confidence few world leaders have mustered
Speaker 1: since the crisis began. I agreed with my friend, Viser
Speaker 1: chairman and ce O, Albert Borla that we would bring
Speaker 1: shipment after shipment and complete the vaccination of the over
Speaker 1: sixteen population in Israel. During the month of March. Borla
Speaker 1: had thrown net Yahoo a political lifeline, faced with surging
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen cases and an election in March the Prime
Speaker 1: Minister latched onto Viser's vaccine as his best hope to
Speaker 1: stay in office. Standing on the tarmac, he bragged that
Speaker 1: Israelis over the age of sixty had already been vaccinated
Speaker 1: thanks to shipments that began in early December, and that
Speaker 1: more doses would come soon. That was because he'd struck
Speaker 1: a deal with Borla to use his country as a
Speaker 1: test case for Fiser's vaccine. Vaccine distribution still has the
Speaker 1: feel of a zero sum game. Five days after nettnya
Speaker 1: Who's victory lap, Fiser told other non US customers that
Speaker 1: it would cut near term supplies while it briefly closed
Speaker 1: its vaccine manufacturing facility in Belgium for an upgrade. Panic
Speaker 1: and anger rippled through world capitals, nowhere more so than
Speaker 1: in Rome. Italy, which has suffered one of the highest
Speaker 1: COVID death rates and which had successfully set up a
Speaker 1: mass vaccination program and inoculated more people than any other
Speaker 1: European Union country, was waiting for new doses when Fiser
Speaker 1: announced the cuts. The country's virus emergencies are at the time.
Speaker 1: Domenico our Coury lashed out, complaining that Fiser had cut
Speaker 1: its shipments by almost thirty percent, just as Italy was
Speaker 1: about to start vaccinating people older than eight on mass
Speaker 1: he warned that Italy could take unspecified action against the company.
Speaker 1: Days after our Cury aired his grievances, Fiser began shipping
Speaker 1: millions of doses to Israel. Within a week, Israel expanded
Speaker 1: its rollout to include sixteen to eighteen year olds. Look,
Speaker 1: we are very angry, Lucas Aiah, president of Italy's Veneto region,
Speaker 1: one of the areas most affected by COVID with more
Speaker 1: than dred deaths, told reporters sitting in front of EU
Speaker 1: and Italian flags, he'd recently learned that supplies to his
Speaker 1: region would be cut fifty for that week. I want
Speaker 1: to understand what Nobel Prize winner they paid to organize
Speaker 1: the distribution, or which principle or algorithm they used. It
Speaker 1: didn't come from some algorithm. The vaccine allocation was the
Speaker 1: product of a company struggling to apportion doses while demand
Speaker 1: far exceeded supply, using an opaque process that appears to
Speaker 1: involve a mix of order size, position in the queue.
Speaker 1: Production forecasts, calls from world leaders, the potential to advance
Speaker 1: the science, and of course, the desire to make a profit.
Speaker 1: Everybody wanted deliveries in the first quarter, and we tried
Speaker 1: to allow discussions and negotiations to spread things so everybody
Speaker 1: would get in an equitable base. Borla says the countries
Speaker 1: that hadn't placed orders wanted a place in line, and
Speaker 1: those that had placed early orders wanted to buy more.
Speaker 1: It was a constant negotiation, he says. Everybody wanted it,
Speaker 1: of course earlier. Feiser says the agreement with Israel didn't
Speaker 1: affect doses going elsewhere. Israel had two things going for it.
Speaker 1: Net and Yahoo had offered to pay roughly thirty dollars
Speaker 1: a dose about it, more than the US government, according
Speaker 1: to people familiar with the deal. He also agreed to
Speaker 1: share countrywide data on the vaccine, a two dose product
Speaker 1: based on an experimental platform called Messenger RNA or mr NA.
Speaker 1: It's being used almost exclusively in Israel in what amounts
Speaker 1: to a large scale effectiveness study. Fiser considered offering the
Speaker 1: same arrangement to Iceland, but the country didn't have enough
Speaker 1: COVID cases to make a study meaningful. By February, Israel
Speaker 1: had given first doses to of its nine million people,
Speaker 1: making it the world leader Italy meanwhile, had administered first
Speaker 1: shots to three point six percent of its citizens. Bore
Speaker 1: Less says the agreement with Israel will provide data that
Speaker 1: will transform the world's understanding of how to end the pandemic.
Speaker 1: They are trying to extract the scientific information that the
Speaker 1: whole world is waiting on right now, he says. We'll
Speaker 1: get data on symptomatic and asymptomatic transmission very quickly. Indeed,
Speaker 1: the news out of Israel on February twenty four was remarkable.
Speaker 1: The vaccine prevented of COVID cases in almost six hundred
Speaker 1: thousand vaccinated people. As the first company to develop an
Speaker 1: authorized COVID vaccine, which it did in partnership with Germany's
Speaker 1: bio intech Fiser, wields enormous power. Borla had been Fiser's
Speaker 1: chief executive officer only a year when the pandemic began,
Speaker 1: and almost immediately faced choices. No farma executive would normally
Speaker 1: be making government policy matters, as does the behavior of individuals,
Speaker 1: but to some degree, vaccine makers determine where infections will
Speaker 1: decrease and which economies will reopen first. Their customers are
Speaker 1: elected national leaders who have designed intricate vaccination programs with
Speaker 1: public health officials, but those leaders are learning that they're
Speaker 1: at the mercy of what manufacturers such as Fiser deliver.
Speaker 1: In the past few months, Borla has taken on an
Speaker 1: almost statesmanlike role, holding calls with heads of state, including
Speaker 1: former US President Donald Trump, European Commissioner President Ursula vonder Lyon,
Speaker 1: and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Net and Yah, who
Speaker 1: boasted in January that he'd spoken with Borla seventeen times,
Speaker 1: with the CEO even taking his calls at two am.
Speaker 1: Borla says he's taught to Netanyah who even more since then.
Speaker 1: Fiser's first out of the gate status has also offered
Speaker 1: Borla a sales opportunity like none other. He's locked in
Speaker 1: orders from more than sixty countries on undisclosed commercial terms.
Speaker 1: Fiser has supplied nine million doses globally. It's executing on
Speaker 1: one of the most ambitious scale ups in pharmaceutical history
Speaker 1: to meet the relentless demand, boosting production to two billion
Speaker 1: doses in one more than it has agreements to sell.
Speaker 1: At this stage, it expects the vaccine to generate at
Speaker 1: least fifteen billion dollars in revenue in putting it under
Speaker 1: the brand name Commernity, an ungainly blend of covid, m
Speaker 1: r n A and immunity on act to be one
Speaker 1: of the biggest selling drugs in the world. There's no
Speaker 1: rulebook for how a global corporation should behave during a pandemic.
Speaker 1: Feiser accomplished something extraordinary, exceeding nearly everyone's hopes, and is
Speaker 1: now doing what pharma does, mass marketing life saving products
Speaker 1: at prices the market is willing to pay. It's not
Speaker 1: bound to serve a global public health agenda. All that said,
Speaker 1: there will one day be an autopsy of the pandemic,
Speaker 1: and the central question might be how a single company
Speaker 1: came to hold such power over so many. In May,
Speaker 1: the Trump administration announced the launch of Operation Warp Speed.
Speaker 1: Monsef Slowie, a former Glaxo Smith client executive, joined as
Speaker 1: chief advisor to OWS to figure out which vaccines to back.
Speaker 1: He had an uncommon familiarity with mr and A technology
Speaker 1: from serving on the board of Maderna, which had spent
Speaker 1: years researching the platform. No drug using m RNA technology
Speaker 1: had ever been approved. Sloughy knew Fiser might be a
Speaker 1: contender after it announced its decision to collaborate with bio
Speaker 1: in Tech, another m RNA pioneer, but he didn't know Borla.
Speaker 1: When they first spoke in June. Borla made it clear
Speaker 1: he wasn't interested in taking money for research and development
Speaker 1: as the other companies of WS was evaluating were. Instead,
Speaker 1: he wanted an advanced purchase order from OWS to guarantee
Speaker 1: a buyer. If Fiser succeeded. The company's fifty billion dollars
Speaker 1: in annual revenue meant it could afford to take a flyer.
Speaker 1: Borla has said it wasn't an easy decision, but he
Speaker 1: felt it liberated scientists from bureaucracy to get faster results.
Speaker 1: Albert was very clear that they had what it takes
Speaker 1: to deliver. Sloughy says Fiser's confidence showed early on. It
Speaker 1: began marketing the vaccine globally in May, soon after it
Speaker 1: started safety testing. The process started in the very early
Speaker 1: days when we reached out to every single country. Borla says.
Speaker 1: We started discussions in all continents of the world. The
Speaker 1: UK was the first country to do a deal, agreeing
Speaker 1: on July twenty to buy thirty million doses, later up
Speaker 1: to forty million to be delivered in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: As with most of Viser's deals with individual countries, the
Speaker 1: terms were not disclosed. Two days later, Fiser announced a
Speaker 1: one point nine billion dollar order from Operation Warp Speed
Speaker 1: for one hundred million doses, pending authorization of its vaccine
Speaker 1: from the Food and Drug Administration. The straight advanced purchase
Speaker 1: order set Fiser apart from all the other OWS candidates. Maderna,
Speaker 1: for example, got two point forty eight billion dollars from
Speaker 1: the US government, including nine and fifty five million dollars
Speaker 1: for clinical development and manufacturing, and payment for one hundred
Speaker 1: million doses. By contrast, Fiser has spent two billion dollars
Speaker 1: of its own money on development. Company executives came out
Speaker 1: of the gate asking for a higher price per dose
Speaker 1: than the nineteen dollars and fifty cents they eventually agreed on,
Speaker 1: According to former senior Administration officials who declined to be
Speaker 1: named because the discussions were confidential, higher prices were floated
Speaker 1: in Europe to last summer. Fiser and Biointech started off
Speaker 1: asking for fifty four euros about sixty five dollars a dose.
Speaker 1: In negotiations with the EU, A person familiar with the talks, says,
Speaker 1: Confirming German media reports, Biointech co founder Uger Shaheen told
Speaker 1: Build that initial ballpark figures were based on rough calculations
Speaker 1: of production costs before they figured out how the manufacturing
Speaker 1: would work. They later settled on a range of fifteen
Speaker 1: to thirty euros a dose for industrialized countries, depending on
Speaker 1: order size. Free from the strings attached by a government grant,
Speaker 1: Fiser could move faster. We made the early decision to
Speaker 1: begin clinical work and large scale manufacturing at our own
Speaker 1: risk to ensure that product would be available immediately if
Speaker 1: our clinical trials proved successful, Borla said, would anne the
Speaker 1: US deal. Less than a week after securing the US contract,
Speaker 1: Fiser started its final stage trial, saying it aimed to
Speaker 1: seek regulatory review by the FDA as early as October.
Speaker 1: Maderna started its final trial the same day, but a
Speaker 1: longer interval between doses twenty eight days to Fiser's twenty one,
Speaker 1: meant that all other things being equal, Fiser was positioned
Speaker 1: to report results first. The orders kept rolling in a
Speaker 1: few days after the trial started. Japan ordered one and
Speaker 1: twenty million doses to be delivered in the first half
Speaker 1: of one in early August, Canada made a deal. In
Speaker 1: late August, Fiser shared early data showing that participants generated
Speaker 1: a strong immune response to the vaccine, and even more
Speaker 1: countries got in line. In early September, the company agreed
Speaker 1: to potentially supply the EU with as many as three
Speaker 1: hundred million doses, but the block dragged its feet on
Speaker 1: finalizing the deal. The Gulf state of cutter placed in
Speaker 1: order a few weeks later. Borla had been assistently saying
Speaker 1: the company expected to report results from the final stage
Speaker 1: trial by the end of October, which Trump seized on
Speaker 1: as he sagged in the polls in the home stretch
Speaker 1: of his reelection campaign. We're going to have a vaccine
Speaker 1: very soon, maybe even before a very special date, Trump
Speaker 1: said in early September, concerned that Fiser was rushing the
Speaker 1: trial at the expensive safety checks mounted. Pushing back at
Speaker 1: the perception that the Trump administration was pressuring the company,
Speaker 1: Borla promised to make safety paramount. I wanted to speak
Speaker 1: directly to the billions of people, millions of businesses, and
Speaker 1: hundreds of governments around the world that are investing their
Speaker 1: hopes in a safe and effective COVID nineteen vaccine. He
Speaker 1: said in an open letter, the vaccine must be proven safe.
Speaker 1: Fiser ruffled feathers with some inside operation warp speed. The
Speaker 1: company had been pushing for the US government to place
Speaker 1: an additional order of one million doses, but OWS officials
Speaker 1: were wary. The company was already failing to meet its
Speaker 1: production targets for November for re since that were unclear,
Speaker 1: according to the former senior administration officials. Fiser says it
Speaker 1: kept the government informed about production. When Fiser announced the
Speaker 1: results of its final stage trial six days after the election,
Speaker 1: the news was huge. The vaccine was more than effective
Speaker 1: at preventing COVID symptoms. Sloughy says, Borla called him right
Speaker 1: before Viser issued a news release at six am on
Speaker 1: November nine, and he was so excited that he had
Speaker 1: to refrain from shouting for fear of waking up other
Speaker 1: guests in his hotel in Washington. Nevertheless, amid the euphoria
Speaker 1: was some bad news, Viser warned that it would be
Speaker 1: able to produce only fifty million doses worldwide by the
Speaker 1: end of the year, instead of the one million it
Speaker 1: had projected. Fiser was running into major production problems at
Speaker 1: its Acre campus in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where the company set
Speaker 1: up a freezer farm the size of a football field
Speaker 1: to store doses at the required negative seventy five degrees celsius.
Speaker 1: Scaling up manufacture ring of a new product with a
Speaker 1: new technology required a steady flow of raw materials. It
Speaker 1: turned out Fiser needed the government's help after all. To
Speaker 1: clear supply chain hold ups. Company executives were pressing warp
Speaker 1: Speed for an order under the Defense Production Act, which
Speaker 1: would give it priority access to suppliers. Other OWS candidates
Speaker 1: had been taking advantage of the d PA for months.
Speaker 1: OWS hesitated the administration. Officials say they were worried that
Speaker 1: Fiser would use its size and market cloud to muscle
Speaker 1: out Maderna in the supply chain if it got equivalent
Speaker 1: status under the d p A. Fiser's production hold ups
Speaker 1: had a huge impact on the US vaccine rollout. Before
Speaker 1: the trial results were announced, OWS had been expecting twenty
Speaker 1: million doses in November and twenty million in December. Instead,
Speaker 1: it got nothing in December and twenty million doses in December,
Speaker 1: some of them flown in from Fiser's production site in
Speaker 1: Belgium to make up for the gaps. From Kalamazoo. The UK,
Speaker 1: which was the first country to authorize the vaccine on
Speaker 1: December two, had been expecting ten million doses by the
Speaker 1: end of the year, but got about half that. Despite
Speaker 1: the supply challenges, Fiser announced right before Christmas that it
Speaker 1: had agreed to supply the US with another one hundred
Speaker 1: million doses. At the same time, government officials finally agreed
Speaker 1: to provide the company with priority under the d p A.
Speaker 1: In late December, a flurry of news stories from the
Speaker 1: Middle East revealed that Fiser had contracted to sell millions
Speaker 1: of doses to countries in previously unreported deals. Dubai got
Speaker 1: its first doses blown in from Belgium and announced it
Speaker 1: would aim to inoculate seventy of its three point three
Speaker 1: million people with the Fiser vaccine. Officials in Saudi Arabia
Speaker 1: told TV broadcaster Al Arabia they were expecting three million
Speaker 1: Fiser doses, with a third of those to be delivered
Speaker 1: by the end of February. Oman ordered three hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy thousand, paying thirty dollars a shot for early supplies
Speaker 1: arriving in December and twenty four dollars a shot for
Speaker 1: later shipments. The Health Minister told a government news outlet
Speaker 1: this appeared to be one of the highest prices outside Israel,
Speaker 1: though lack of disclosure makes it impossible to say for sure.
Speaker 1: Fiser executives found a partial fix to their supply problem
Speaker 1: in the vaccine vials themselves. They just needed authorization to
Speaker 1: change the labels to say the vials contained six doses
Speaker 1: instead of five. Its standard practice in the pharmaceutical industry
Speaker 1: to overfill vials slightly to avoid running the risk of
Speaker 1: undershooting and violating FDA labeling laws. Fiser was overfilling each
Speaker 1: vial by just enough for an extra dose if vaccinators
Speaker 1: used what are called low dead volume syringes, but not
Speaker 1: all vaccination sites had the syringes. Moreover, the company's application
Speaker 1: to the f d A and other regulators specified five
Speaker 1: dose vials viser needed to generate data showing the extra
Speaker 1: shot could be reliably extracted. The company did that and
Speaker 1: then began pressing FDA officials to change the authorization to
Speaker 1: recognize the sixth dose. O w S officials were against
Speaker 1: the change, anticipate nightmare logistical implications, right when they were
Speaker 1: starting the biggest mass vaccination campaign in US history. The
Speaker 1: former senior administration officials say Viser's vaccine needed to be
Speaker 1: kept at subarctic temperatures. It was already difficult enough to
Speaker 1: distribute without last minute rejiggering. Recently, the FDA announced that
Speaker 1: it can be kept at normal freezer temperatures for up
Speaker 1: to two weeks. The company's lobbying efforts succeeded. On January six,
Speaker 1: the FDA revised its fact sheet, allowing the sixth dose
Speaker 1: and effectively boosting Viser's production. By regulators in Europe, the
Speaker 1: UK and elsewhere followed suit. The US and the UK
Speaker 1: had managed to source the syringes, but other countries were
Speaker 1: left scrambling. Sweden and Japan complained they didn't have enough
Speaker 1: special syringes to extract the sixth dose, and warned it
Speaker 1: would likely mean millions of doses would be thrown away.
Speaker 1: Austria was also short of supplies. Borla defended the policy
Speaker 1: change by saying the company had validated thirty six syringe
Speaker 1: needle comb nations that could get the extra dose out.
Speaker 1: It would be criminal if we can use six doses
Speaker 1: and we are throwing away one vaccine that can save
Speaker 1: lives right now, he told Bloomberg in late January. The
Speaker 1: modification was a huge win for Fiser. The company had
Speaker 1: promised to supply the US with one dred million doses
Speaker 1: by the end of the first quarter, and it now
Speaker 1: says it can provide one twenty million because nations paid
Speaker 1: by the dose. The move also delivered an instant price
Speaker 1: hike per Vile. When Borla took the helm at Viser
Speaker 1: in January nine, his mission was to get the company
Speaker 1: to focus on blockbuster drugs and to fend off a
Speaker 1: potential battle with the Trump administration over drug pricing. The
Speaker 1: coronavirus immediately gave him a new focus. Viser's little known
Speaker 1: partnership with a German biotech turned it into a hero
Speaker 1: of the pandemic. There was considerable doubt that Mr and
Speaker 1: A vaccines would work, but Borla's willingness to gamble on
Speaker 1: the new technology you paid off. While Israel was swimming
Speaker 1: in Visor vaccines in late January, other countries were struggling
Speaker 1: to find out when their deliveries would resume. On January eight,
Speaker 1: the EU said it had doubled its order by securing
Speaker 1: the purchase of another three hundred million doses. A week later,
Speaker 1: Fiser announced the supply cut and the Belgian shutdown within days.
Speaker 1: It informed officials in Canada, which had recently doubled its
Speaker 1: order to forty million shots, that the country would receive
Speaker 1: no doses the following week. Prime Minister Trudeau spoke with
Speaker 1: boor Law on January one, but the call didn't unlock
Speaker 1: additional supplies. Desperate for doses, he agreed to take vaccines
Speaker 1: from KOVACS, the facility backed by the World Health Organization
Speaker 1: to provide two billion doses to low income countries. Canada
Speaker 1: was the only group of seven country to do so.
Speaker 1: Opposition politicians accused him of grabbing doses meant for countries
Speaker 1: that couldn't afford to do bilateral deals. Bahrain, Dubai, and
Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia also reported delays and shipments. Viser supply has
Speaker 1: been a global challenge. Amyor Sharif, head of Dubai's COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen Command and Control Center, told Bloomberg TV there have
Speaker 1: been a lot of discussions with visor representatives in the region.
Speaker 1: Oman was cut too, Do not panic, Ahmed bin Muhammad
Speaker 1: Al saidi Oman's health minister urged at a press conference
Speaker 1: on February one. We were assured that the next consignment
Speaker 1: will be here before the middle of this month. The
Speaker 1: Gulf States have weathered the delays without major consequences because
Speaker 1: their rates of infection are relatively low. Mexico, with surging
Speaker 1: cases in the world's third highest number of deaths, has
Speaker 1: felt Viser's supply cut more profoundly, having agreed in early
Speaker 1: December to buy thirty four million Visor doses. The nation
Speaker 1: started vaccinating in late December, the first country to do
Speaker 1: so in Latin America. Then Viser's shipments stopped for three
Speaker 1: weeks until roughly five thousand doses for healthcare workers arrived
Speaker 1: in mid February. It hadn't d and started vaccinating the
Speaker 1: elderly on February second. Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard criticized
Speaker 1: Fiser for holding back doses that are already signed and
Speaker 1: paid for. The world was waiting for Viser to retool
Speaker 1: its sprawling facility, the size of several sports stadiums on
Speaker 1: the outskirts of the tiny Belgian town of Purrs. Last year,
Speaker 1: Fiser hired several hundred more staff, bringing the total to
Speaker 1: more than three thousand, as it geared up for production.
Speaker 1: That wasn't enough to keep up with the crush of orders.
Speaker 1: The partial closure of the plant lasted almost two weeks.
Speaker 1: When there is a question of life and death, when
Speaker 1: there is a question of the global economy, the demand
Speaker 1: will always be bigger, Borla says, you will get complaints.
Speaker 1: Fiser wasn't alone in cutting supplies to Europe. Astra Zenica
Speaker 1: later also fell well short on its promised deliveries to
Speaker 1: the EU, but Europe was relying on the American company
Speaker 1: to start its rollout. There's no doubt in my mind
Speaker 1: that there is anxiety, there is stress, there is usher,
Speaker 1: Borla says. The voices are becoming louder and people will
Speaker 1: try to find the scapegoats. In the Rome region, the
Speaker 1: viser cuts delayed the vaccine campaign for people older than
Speaker 1: eighty by a week, with first shots administered on February eight.
Speaker 1: The knock on effect means some of the most vulnerable
Speaker 1: are waiting until spring to get their first doses. Salvatore Parisi, four,
Speaker 1: a retired Rome courthouse clerk, is sheltering at home until
Speaker 1: his April third appointment at a hospital for his first
Speaker 1: viser shot, with a second dose scheduled for April twenty four.
Speaker 1: He's holding out hope that doses might become available sooner
Speaker 1: at his family doctor's office. Every week we call. Is
Speaker 1: there something new? No, no, he says via telephone to
Speaker 1: questions relayed by his seventy nine year old wife, Maria Sinibaldi,
Speaker 1: because his hearing isn't what it once was. I'm a
Speaker 1: little scared, but not too angry. I'm just waiting for
Speaker 1: a call from my doctor. The EU had developed a
Speaker 1: strategy of pooling vaccine procurement across the twenty seven member states.
Speaker 1: It signed supply deals with six vaccine developers. With Fiser,
Speaker 1: the European Commission agreed to a framework for supplying countries quarterly,
Speaker 1: leaving week to week decisions to the company and each nation,
Speaker 1: says Stephen de Kersmacher, a commissioned spokesman. When Fiser made
Speaker 1: its cuts in January, that arrangement led to a patchwork
Speaker 1: of supply gaps across the continent, which caused anchor to
Speaker 1: mount against the drugmaker. A Fiser spokeswoman said the cuts
Speaker 1: were made with the understanding that the Belgian factory revamp
Speaker 1: would lead to significantly increased volumes before the end of March.
Speaker 1: EU member states also agreed not to negotiate bilateral agreements
Speaker 1: with drug companies. That didn't stop Germany from striking a
Speaker 1: separate preliminary agreement with Biointech for thirty million doses after
Speaker 1: it gave the company a three hundred and seventy five
Speaker 1: million euro grant in September. Fiser is not party to
Speaker 1: that agreement. The e C says it hasn't seen Germany's deal,
Speaker 1: which hasn't been finalized. Parallel negotiations aren't allowed in our
Speaker 1: vaccine strategy. De ker Schmacher says legally, it's not allowed.
Speaker 1: German Chancellor Angela Merkel tried to diffuse Europe's vaccine crisis
Speaker 1: by holding a video conference with Commission officials and drugmakers,
Speaker 1: including Fiser executives, on February first. Fiser says it got
Speaker 1: back on schedule with the EU at the end of January.
Speaker 1: Borla says countries started getting more doses by late February.
Speaker 1: Striking deals and mass producing a new vaccine in the
Speaker 1: middle of a pandemic was never going to be straightforward.
Speaker 1: This is the fastest any vaccine has been approved and
Speaker 1: ruled out, the fastest any vaccine has been mass administered
Speaker 1: to people, the fastest response to a pandemic and probably
Speaker 1: the fastest manufacturing ramp up ever, says Jonathan Miller, an
Speaker 1: analyst at ever Corps, I s I I don't think
Speaker 1: this could have gone much faster than it did. Public
Speaker 1: health officials have warned that rich countries making arrange mints
Speaker 1: with companies such as Fiser will restrict access to the
Speaker 1: vaccine for those who can't afford prices no object deals.
Speaker 1: In January, w h O Director General tedros Gabrie Sus
Speaker 1: criticized bilateral deals and implored high income countries to share doses,
Speaker 1: warning that the world is on the brink of a
Speaker 1: catastrophic moral failure. It wasn't until the end of that
Speaker 1: month that Borla announced an agreement with Kovacs. The deal
Speaker 1: for forty million doses represented less than two percent of
Speaker 1: Viser's projected one production. Other vaccine developers have come in bigger.
Speaker 1: Astra Zeneca has committed one hundred and seventy million doses
Speaker 1: of its vaccine, while the Serum Institute of India has
Speaker 1: agreed to supply at one point one billion doses of
Speaker 1: its versions of the astra Zenica shot and another vaccine
Speaker 1: developed by the American company Novavax pending authorization. Kovacs is
Speaker 1: also finalizing commitments for hundreds of millions of additional doses
Speaker 1: from Johnson and Johnson and Novovas. No one in public
Speaker 1: health says the current global rollout of COVID vaccines is
Speaker 1: the best way to beat the pandemic. In an ideal world,
Speaker 1: what we would have had is one global mechanism where
Speaker 1: manufacturers would have said we're all going to supply one entity,
Speaker 1: and government said we're all going to procure through one entity,
Speaker 1: says Katin O'Brien, the w h OSE technical lead on Kovacs.
Speaker 1: It makes much more sense more. La of course, doesn't
Speaker 1: run a public health agency. He answers to his shareholders.
Speaker 1: Locking in orders early, sometimes at a higher price for
Speaker 1: those that can afford to pay more, is what a
Speaker 1: CEO does. Fiser has said it expects initial profit margins
Speaker 1: in the upper twenty percent range, which is high for
Speaker 1: a vaccine. Moderna has charged more for its shot outside
Speaker 1: the US, but it's limited manufacturing capacity means it's done
Speaker 1: a fraction of the deal's Fiser has, with most deliveries
Speaker 1: expected only in the spring. Astra Zeneca has struck dozens
Speaker 1: of bilateral agreements, but it's promised not to make a
Speaker 1: profit during the pandemic. It's selling its shot for a
Speaker 1: few dollars a dose. If there's a challenger to Viser's primacy,
Speaker 1: it might be the recently authorized vaccine from Johnson and Johnson,
Speaker 1: which is highly effective, requires simple refrigeration, and is administered
Speaker 1: in a single shot. For now, though Fiser has unparalleled
Speaker 1: brand awareness, even if commernity doesn't quite roll off the tongue,
Speaker 1: the name might not even be used in the u S.
Speaker 1: Brand names are established only after full FDA approval. In
Speaker 1: late February, President Joe Biden toured Visor's Michigan plant and
Speaker 1: reassured the public that the government is working overtime to
Speaker 1: get everyone vaccinated. To meet the challenge, Fiser is continuing
Speaker 1: to increase production. The company now expects to be able
Speaker 1: to ship thirteen million doses a week by mid March,
Speaker 1: up from four to five million a week in early February.
Speaker 1: Speaking with investors and analysts after releasing earnings results in January,
Speaker 1: Borla and other Viser executives talked expensively about a post
Speaker 1: pandemic world in which the company would be able to
Speaker 1: charge more for the vaccine. Vaccine prices are normally about
Speaker 1: one fifty two hundred and seventy five dollars, said chief
Speaker 1: financial officer Frank Damelio. We're in a pandemic pricing environment,
Speaker 1: he said. Obviously we're going to get more on price.
Speaker 1: With new variants of the coronavirus spreading, the need for
Speaker 1: regular booster shots is highly likely. Fiser is working on
Speaker 1: a new vaccine that can target the South African mutation
Speaker 1: of the virus, which may infect some people who have
Speaker 1: been vaccinated. The prospect of the world's population of almost
Speaker 1: eight billion needing boosters puts COVID vaccines into an entirely
Speaker 1: new league. Fiser expects to be able to make its
Speaker 1: vaccine easier to store and ship. It's working on a
Speaker 1: freeze dried version. The company is preparing for what Borla
Speaker 1: calls an open market, in which supplies are plentiful and
Speaker 1: people can choose which vaccine they want. I would feel
Speaker 1: very comfortable that we will have the and share of
Speaker 1: the market because we are first and we are best,
Speaker 1: Borla said on his earnings call. In scenarios that COVID
Speaker 1: will move from a pandemic into more of a normal
Speaker 1: type of vaccination business. It is very clear that Fiser
Speaker 1: will have a key advantage, not only because of the
Speaker 1: strength of data, but also because we have developed significant
Speaker 1: brand equity and trust with the people. The shortage will
Speaker 1: eventually subside. Until then, Borla occupies a strange position. He's
Speaker 1: a savior, the bold leader of a company that's stepped up.
Speaker 1: But he promised desperate governments doses he couldn't deliver on time.
Speaker 1: As supplies increase, hard feelings may fade, but Borla's decisions
Speaker 1: during the height of the pandemic will be the subject
Speaker 1: of study. There was a vacuum in global leadership. He
Speaker 1: and his company filled it. The world needs better solutions
Speaker 1: before the next public health crisis comes around. With Ivan Levingstone,
Speaker 1: Sylvia Westall, and Naomi Kreski, and that's this week's cover.
Speaker 1: Find more stories in the current issue of Bomberg Business
Speaker 1: Week magazine on newsstands, online at Bloomberg dot com and
Speaker 1: on the Bloomberg Terminal, and be sure to to listen
Speaker 1: to Tip and myself on our Bloomberg Business Week Radio show,
Speaker 1: airing live Monday through Friday at two pm Wall Street
Speaker 1: Time on Bloomberg Radio Watch US two on our daily
Speaker 1: broadcast on YouTube just search Bloomberg Global News and you
Speaker 1: can also see me on Bloomberg Quicktake, available at Bloomberg
Speaker 1: dot com, slash qt and on streaming platforms like Roku,
Speaker 1: Apple TV, Samsung TV and more. I'm Tim Stanovick and
Speaker 1: I'm Carol Masster. This is Bloomberg. Climate Change is at
Speaker 1: the center of everything. Bloomberg Green is at the center
Speaker 1: of solving it. Backed by powerful data and a global newsroom.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Green is focused on solutions and the greatest opportunity
Speaker 1: of our generation. Bloomberg Green Solutions for a Changing Climate
Speaker 1: in partnership with General Motors, j l L and Standard Chartered.
Speaker 1: Visit Bloomberg dot com slash Green