The prices of vaccines for the new coronavirus, which was purchased by European Union, are shrouded in a veil of utter secrecy. And rightly so, as she herself has stated Commission, are subject to explicit confidentiality agreements with the companies.
For months, citizen groups, Members of the European Parliament, and organizations advocating for transparency have been pressing the Commission to disclose the figures for individual agreements, arguing that agreements involving taxpayers’ money must be more transparent.
However, this had not been possible until now. On Thursday, December 17, 2020, a tweet that was accidentally posted by the Deputy Minister Belgium's Budget Eva De Bleeker, revealed the price of each vaccine purchased by the EU. and how much Belgium will spend in total on vaccines. The tweet was deleted, but the Dutch-language news website «kept it» HLN.
According to the screenshot published by HLN, the EU spends between €1.78 and 18 $ per COVID-19 vaccine. The price per dose reported for each of the six vaccines was as follows:
- BioNTech/Pfizer: €12
- Moderna: $18
- Oxford/AstraZeneca: €1.78
- Johnson & Johnson: $8.50
- Sanofi/GSK: €7.56
- CureVac: €10
The Belgium will buy more than 33 million vaccines for a total of 279 million euros. De Bleecker said that the publication of the price breakdown was «a mistake on the part of her team,» according to HLN. For the record, the European Commission yesterday reached a preliminary agreement with yet another company—the seventh—called Novavax.
The Effectiveness of Vaccines
Beyond the cost of vaccines, what concerns the public—and above all the scientific community—is the effectiveness of the vaccines currently available. According to the results of each company’s clinical trials, the effectiveness is as follows:
- Moderna: 95%
- Pfizer/BioNTech: 95%
- AstraZeneca (Oxford): 70%
- Russian Sputnik V vaccine (no agreement with the EU): 96.2%
