Five Ways Pfizer’s Covid Vaccine Changes the Life for All Other Covid Vaccines
(Thursday, November 12, 2020]​
​This week, Pfizer’s announcement that its Covid vaccine is 90% effective upended the path to market for all other vaccines in development. There are 10 other vaccines currently in Phase 3 clinical trials; additionally there are 14 in Phase 2, and 38 in Phase 1 clinical trials worldwide, all of which have a new world to deal with. There are five ways everyone else would need to adjust their programs. First, with the potential efficiency of 90%, Pfizer just moved the goal post for everyone to be 90% effective. Although FDA has set the goal for approval of a given vaccine at 50% effectiveness; that standard will likely no longer be satisfactory. It would be hard for regulators to approve a vaccine with lower efficiency, and for the public to trust such a vaccine. Pfizer’s results were based on preliminary evidence and it is possible that the final number for efficiency, once the complete results are available, is lower than 90%, but for now, this is the efficiency we need to see for approval. This is further emphasized by the announcement that the Russian vaccine is also 92% effective. Second, the race to be the first FDA-approved vaccine is further amplified. For the vaccines in Phase 3 clinical trials, there is a reasonable chance of catching-up but for vaccines in earlier stages, the job just got extremely hard. Once 2 or more Covid vaccines that are 90% or more effective are available to the public, it would be almost impossible for the rest of the products to even get their clinical trials completed. It would not only be almost impossible to convince volunteers but likely unethical to give an experimental vaccine with unknown potential when highly efficient vaccines are available. Third, the first vaccines will likely saturate the supply chain. Pfizer vaccine and others require ultra-low temperature storage and shipping, and since everyone on the planet would be clamoring for these vaccines, they would end up consuming all available and newly created resources for storage and shipping. Fourth, Pfizer has most likely set the price for all vaccines. Pfizer announced that its vaccine would cost less than $20 per dose or $40 for the two-dose treatment in the US and Europe, and lower in poorer countries. Moderna had earlier announced that its vaccine would be $70-80 per treatment, almost double the cost of Pfizer vaccine. It is hard to imagine anyone paying double for the same vaccine. So, the next vaccine would need to be below $40 per treatment to be feasible, literally cutting the Moderna vaccine’s price to half. Future vaccines would need to be lower priced to be competitive. With more products the price of the treatment is bound to go further down. Price will rule who stays in the Covid vaccine business and who can’t. Fifth, the company with the best manufacturing and distribution systems for its vaccine will decide which vaccine ends up being popularly used. Pfizer, being a global corporation with manufacturing, sales and distribution channels in practically every corner of the world, is at a huge advantage over its competition. The next mRNA vaccine close enough to similar data is Moderna, a company that has never manufactured and sold a single product. Although, unlike Pfizer, that stayed out of government funding and logistical support for its trials, Moderna is almost entirely funded by billions of dollars of the US government money and logistical support. So, the US government has a personal stake in getting the Moderna vaccine and other government-funded vaccines to the people, but if Pfizer can meet the demand and has the distribution channels pre-formed, the government would be forced to consider Pfizer’s vaccine over others. There are other political and financial issues to deal with for all vaccine developers. This is a new world. This is a life lesson on how competition between multiple similar products can change everything with one event.