Profits from Covid-19 vaccines have produced “new billionaires”

Gains from Covid-19 vaccines have supported around nine people become billionaires, a campaign group said, asking for an end to pharmaceutical corporations’ “monopoly control” on vaccine technology.“Between them, the nine new billionaires have a combined net wealth of $19.3 billion (15.8 billion euros), enough to fully vaccinate all people in low-income countries 1.3 times,” The People’s Vaccine Alliance said in a comment. The group, a network of organizations and activists campaigning for a conclusion to property rights and copyrights for injections, said its numbers were based on the Forbes Rich List data.

“These billionaires are the human face of the huge profits many pharmaceutical corporations are making from the monopoly they hold on these vaccines,” said Anna Marriott from charity Oxfam, which is part of the alliance. In addition to the new mega-rich, eight current billionaires have seen their consolidated wealth rise by 32.2 billion dollars thanks to the vaccine rollout, the alliance said. Exceeding the list of new vaccine billionaires were the CEO of Moderna Stephane Bancel, and his BioNTech correlative Ugur Sahin.

Three other new billionaires are co-founders of the Chinese vaccine group casino Biologics. The analysis arrives ahead of the G20 Global Health Summit on Friday, which has been a lightning rod for increasing calls to momentarily expel intellectual property protections on Covid-19 vaccines. Proponents say doing so would raise production in developing nations and discuss the dramatic inequity in the way. The United States, as well as prominent personalities like Pope Francis, supported the concept of a global refusal on patent protections.At a Paris summit soliciting to boost financing in Africa amid the pandemic on Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron called for the expulsion of “all these constraints in terms of intellectual property which blocks the production of certain types of vaccines”.The European Commission said that it would be a “constructive” view in WTO discussions on the matter.

“The highly effective vaccines we have are thanks to massive amounts of taxpayers’ money so it can’t be fair that private individuals are cashing in while hundreds of millions face second and third waves completely unprotected,” said Heidi Chow, Senior Policy and Campaigns Manager at Global Justice Now, which supported analyze the billionaire data.

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“As thousands of people die each day in India, it is utterly repugnant to put the interests of the billionaire owners of Big Pharma ahead of the desperate needs of millions,” she continued. Entrepreneurs have emphasized that patent stability is not the limiting agent in ramping up vaccine making. They say an extensive range of problems from the set up of production sites, to the sourcing of raw materials, to the availability of qualified personnel are taking up the manufacturing method.