The European Union placed orders. The United States placed orders. The United Kingdom placed orders. Japan placed orders. Small and, let’s say, low- and middle-income countries, they weren’t placing orders. I sent letters into heads of states of these countries urging them to change their position and place orders because the quantities will be allocated. They didn’t do it, most of them, and they didn’t do it because they placed orders either with other vaccines from China, from Russia, some other solution, maybe from AstraZeneca.
When eventually our vaccine became very successful and we started producing enough quantities and maybe some others that have problems to deliver the quantities that they promised, then they all came back to us, and they asked that we want those. The problem was that in the first few months the doses were already allocated to countries that placed orders. I couldn’t just tell them I’m not giving it to you anymore.
So the solution was to build more so that everybody can get it, and this is where we invested dramatically, and from 1.3 billion doses that we were expecting to produce towards the end of 2020, in 2021 pretty soon in the first quarter, we raised that to three billion instead of 1.3 billion.
I’m very happy to tell you that by the end of this year, which is in one month and a half, we will have produced three billion doses, and from there… approximately 40 percent, 1.2 billion [doses]… will go to low- and middle-income countries and in the quarters that follow I think everybody will have enough doses because we are producing four billion for next year and just from one company that will be enough for, basically, everyone who wants can have access.
FREDERICK KEMPE: And part of this was an agreement with, I believe, the Biden administration and the US government, in which you provided at cost, and they are providing to certain countries at no cost. Is that right?
ALBERT BOURLA: It’s absolutely right. This is the biggest agreement that we made with them. It is one billion doses. The US government is buying those doses from us at cost and then they are giving those doses free of charge, completely free of charge, to other countries. They donate them.
The agreement with the US government is that they can give them to whoever they want as long as they belong to the list of the ninety-two, approximately, poorest countries in the world. They cannot give it to middle-income countries. They need to give them for free to the poorest countries of the world and this is what they want to do, and this is what they are doing. No strings attached from anything that I know, and I can see. They are just giving the doses without asking anything in return.
FREDERICK KEMPE: Where do we stand today? Masks, jabs, testing kits—are these going to become a more permanent part of our lives, or is there an end to what we’re going through as we see different variants rise up here and there and new need for a response?
ALBERT BOURLA: No, I believe we will see an end. I think we believe that life will go back to the way that we knew before. Of course, there will be changes because of things we learn. I think we’ll be changing the way that people work now that we know that this works that well.
I believe we will see an end. I think we believe that life will go back to the way that we knew before. Of course, there will be changes because of things we learn.
ALBERT BOURLA, CHAIRMAN AND CEO, PFIZER
But I think we will reach the normal waves of social life that you can go to the cinema, that you can go to restaurants, that we don’t have to wear a mask. That will end. To do that, we need to vaccinate with a full series of doses the vast majority of the people, and if we do that, we will have herd immunity and then we will reduce the virus all over the world.
The only thing that stands between the new way of life and the current way of life, frankly, is the hesitancy to get vaccinated, the people that are afraid to get the vaccines, and they create issues not only for them. Unfortunately, they are going to affect the lives of others and, frankly, the lives of the people that they love the most because they are putting at risk the people that they hug, they kiss, [and] they socialize with.
For God’s sake, it is such a big mistake and it was such a big disservice to society to politicize something like that, to become a political statement if you want to mask or not. If you were, you’re a Democrat. If you’re not, you are a hardcore Republican. That’s ridiculous. It should not be like that, and it was a very bad service to humanity.
FREDERICK KEMPE: And is there going to be an annual vaccine for COVID-19? Is a booster shot enough right now? Can you see into the future well enough to tell us what you think that looks like?
ALBERT BOURLA: I think the booster shot, the third dose, is the one that gives very, very high level of protection, higher than the originally achieved levels of protection, which was 95 percent with the two doses. The question is how long will it last? We know that we saw a waning of immunity six months after the second dose. We need to follow up for six, seven, eight, nine months after the booster dose.
If I can take a prediction, because we have seen these type of vaccination curves multiple times and the immunogenicity curves, it looks like that it will last for a year. It looks like there is a chance that this will become an annual revaccination. However, I have been surprised many times in my life with things that in science, we expect things, and they don’t come exactly like that. We need to wait and see. But the likely scenario is annual revaccination.
FREDERICK KEMPE: What keeps you up at night and then what gives you the most hope, looking into the future?
ALBERT BOURLA: The future of the life-science sector is brilliant. There is going to be a huge need for good medicines. People are getting older, and not only they live longer but this means that new diseases that were not important before start emerging. And also, people are moving from rural places to urban places. A hundred fifty million people in the world are moving to cities every year.
This means in health care, from zero access almost to medicines to access to medicines. The demand will be huge. I think science is at the cusp to be able to provide solutions for this. The offer also will be there. And this is happening because biology, combined with digital technologies, right now is unlocking tremendous, tremendous opportunities for new medical treatment.
All of that, I think, is going to be very good. Clearly, there will be an issue, which is the cost, and I think that’s the biggest issue that we are going to face. It is not the cost of medicines. It is the cost to society of people living longer, which means more health care costs, more pensions, more everything.
Medicines will be part of the solution, not part of the problem. The medicines, the good medicines, will reduce hospitalizations, will reduce other medical interventions, and, as a result, will bring savings to the health care system rather than an additional cost and, of course, will make the lives of humans longer and better, and I’m very optimistic that this will happen in the next decades.
