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The Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine was the cheapest vaccine for the EU. Image Credit Flickr
The cost of vaccines against the coronavirus, which the European Union will buy or has already bought, ranges between $ 18 and 1.78 euros.
This is demonstrated by the information accidentally made public by the Belgian Secretary of State for the Budget, Eva de Bleeker, reports HLN.
The official then posted a table on Twitter, showing the prices for a dose of the vaccine and the country’s expected costs for its purchase. This comes after criticism of the opposition N-VA party that the budget for next year did not include information on the cost of vaccines. Half an hour after publication, the post was removed, but journalists managed to save it.
Note that some MEPs have been asking for prices for a long time. They justified it by the fact that we are talking about taxpayer funds, and in such matters full transparency is needed. In turn, the European Commission stated that it could not reveal the prices of the vaccines, since it is a trade secret.
So the price of a dose of vaccine produced by Western companies is:
- Modern $ 18 (almost 500 hryvnia at the exchange rate);
- BioNTech / Pfizer 12 euros (410 hryvnia);
- CureVac 10 euros (340 hryvnia);
- Johnson & Johnson $ 8.50 (240 hryvnia);
- Sanofi / GSK € 7.56 (260 hryvnia);
- Oxford / AstraZeneca € 1.78 (60 hryvnia).
Belgium will buy 33 million doses of vaccines and spend 279 million euros on it.
The official herself said that the table was made public by accident, due to a “communication team error.”
Bleeker added that this price disclosure did not jeopardize Belgium’s access to vaccines.
At the moment, the European Commission has signed agreements with six vaccine manufacturers, two of which have already been submitted for approval by the regulator, and on the eve it completed preliminary negotiations with the seventh, Novavax.
Recall that the price of the Russian vaccine against the coronavirus Sputnik V is 1,942 rubles, which is equivalent to 740 hryvnias at the current exchange rate.
Earlier, we found out when vaccination against coronavirus disease will start in Ukraine.