Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc. on Tuesday projected it will earn about $15 billion in revenue from its COVID-19 vaccine this year, the company said.
Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, the first in the U.S., was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for emergency use authorization (EUA) on Dec. 11.
“2020 has been a transformational year, not only for Pfizer, but also in the life of every patient in every community that we serve,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said in a statement. “We saw the culmination of Pfizer’s decade-long conversion into a pure-play, science and innovation-focused company … Our record-breaking success at developing a vaccine against Covid-19, along with our partner BioNTech, is just one example of what we believe this new Pfizer is capable of achieving.”
Pfizer’s fourth-quarter earnings report was the first since its vaccine received its EUA. Since then, the vaccine, developed in partnership with German firm BioNTech, has begun to be distributed across the world. The company said it has shipped 65 million doses so far, including 29 million to the U.S. The company expects to have distributed 200 million doses to the U.S. by the end of May, two months ahead of its contractual obligation.
The vaccine contributed $154 million in sales during the fourth quarter, the company said. “Pfizer’s projection for revenue from the vaccine in 2021 primarily includes doses expected to be delivered under existing contracts and may be updated as new contracts are executed, the company said, indicating that revenues could be even greater,” CNN reported.
“The company said it can potentially make a total of 2 billion doses worldwide by the end of 2021, based on expansion at its current facilities and ‘contingent upon adding more suppliers and contract manufacturers,’ though it’s unsure if it will actually sell all those doses,” CNN reported. “French pharmaceutical company Sanofi recently signed on to fill and pack more than 100 million vials of Pfizer’s vaccine this year in an effort to meet huge demand for the shots, as much of the world continues to be pummeled by the pandemic.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci says that the United States is “real close” to approving a third COVID-19 vaccine, the first one to use double-stranded DNA and be delivered in a single injection.
Fauci, an immunologist and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who served on Trump’s White House Coronavirus Task Force and is now working with the Biden administration, said on MSNBC that the new vaccine is just two weeks away from being approved.
“No more than two weeks from now the data will be analyzed in a similar fashion the way we analyzed it with the Moderna and the Pfizer candidate,” Fauci said. “That is an independent data and safety monitoring board.”
“We’ll look at the data, determine if it’s ready to be given to the company so that they can go to the FDA [Food and Drug Administration] and ask to see if they can get an emergency use authorization.” He added that he didn’t “want to get ahead of them but I have to tell you I would be surprised if it was any more than two weeks from now that the data will be analyzed and decisions would be made.”