Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel on Monday pushed again on criticism of the corporate’s plans to boost the worth of its mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines by 400 %, arguing that the billions of {dollars} in federal funding the corporate obtained performed little function within the vaccine’s growth.
Talking on the Wall Road Journal Well being Discussion board, Bancel recommended that the vaccine’s growth is thanks to non-public traders and that the federal funding merely hastened growth that might have occurred regardless. The feedback got here in response to a query of whether or not the corporate has a “ethical obligation” to offer again to the taxpayers who helped develop the life-saving immunization—presumably by not dramatically mountain climbing the vaccine’s worth because it strikes from federal distribution to the industrial market this 12 months.
Whereas the federal government most lately paid $26 per dose for Moderna’s up to date booster dose, the corporate is planning to boost the worth of its photographs to $110 to $130 per dose.
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