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BRUSSELS (Reuters) – US drugmaker Pfizer has complained of a breach of confidentiality after a politician in Belgium published the price per dose of COVID-19 vaccines ordered by the country on Thursday, according to a Belgian newspaper.
Belgian Secretary of State Eva De Bleeker tweeted a table with the number of doses and the price per dose of each vaccine, after a 30-hour debate on the Belgian budget in parliament. He later deleted his tweet.
Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, whose COVID-19 vaccine is the first to have been approved by Western regulators, are among the suppliers to the European Union, including Belgium.
Elisabeth Schraepen, spokeswoman for the US pharmaceuticals for the Benelux region, told the Belgian daily Le Soir that the publication of the details was a breach of confidentiality.
“These prices are covered by a confidentiality clause in the contract with the European Commission,” Schraepen said.
The table briefly published by De Bleeker showed that the Belgian government paid 12 euros ($ 14.7) per dose to buy around five million injections of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine.
Sources familiar with the matter have told Reuters that the EU agreed to pay 15.50 euros ($ 18.34) per dose for the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine.
The Belgian price does not take into account the initial non-refundable payments of hundreds of millions of euros that the EU has made to many vaccine manufacturers to insure their vaccines, an EU official told Reuters.
EU governments pay the rest when they request their doses.
“We cannot say anything about this case, everything about vaccines and prices are covered by confidentiality clauses, in the interest of society and also in the interest of the ongoing negotiations,” said a spokesman for the European Commission at a conference. daily press on Friday.
The General Association of the Belgian Medicines Industry said the leak was a “serious violation of the confidentiality clause and harms the government itself.”
The European Medicines Agency has said that an expert panel will meet on December 21 to evaluate the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine and inoculations in the EU could start on December 27.
($ 1 = 0.8161 euros)
(Reporting by Marine Strauss, Foo Yun Chee and Francesco Guarascio; Editing by Mark Potter)
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