COVID vaccine profits spawn nine new billionaires

COVID vaccines have led at least nine people to become billionaires, such as the French president of the Moderna laboratory, Stéphane Bancel, whose accumulated fortune would allow him to vaccinate the poorest countries, the NGO Oxfam said Thursday.

Those new fortunes have sprung up “thanks to the huge profits of pharmaceutical groups which have a monopoly on the production of COVID vaccines”Oxfam said in a statement released ahead of the G20 health summit in Rome on Friday.

Figures are based on rankings of US magazines Forbes, and published by the People’s Vaccine Alliance, of which Oxfam is a part, which brings together organizations and personalities calling for free COVID vaccines around the world.

The fortune accumulated by the nine billionaires mentioned above (19,300 million dollars) “would allow 1.3 times the vaccination of all low-income countries”, who “received only 0.2% of the vaccines produced in the world,” according to Oxfam.

The two fortunes of the group that stand out are those of the president of Moderna, Stéphane Bancel, with $ 4.3 billion, and the president and co-founder of BioNTech, Ugur Sahin, with 4,000 million. Three others are co-founders of Chinese vaccine company CanSino Biologics.

The list:

–Stephane Bancel, CEO of Moderna (worth $ 4.3 billion)

–Ugur Sahin, CEO and co-founder of BioNTech ($ 4 billion)

–Timothy springer, Immunologist and Founding Investor of Moderna ($ 2.2 billion)

–Noubar Afeyan, President of Moderna ($ 1.9 billion)

–Juan López-Belmonte, president of ROVI, a company with a deal to manufacture and package Moderna’s vaccine ($ 1.8 billion)

–Robert Langer, scientist and founding investor of Moderna ($ 1.6 billion)

–Zhu Tao, Co-Founder and Scientific Director of CanSino Biologics ($ 1.3 billion)

–Qiu Dongxu, Co-Founder and Senior Vice President of CanSino Biologics ($ 1.2 billion)

–Mao Huihua, also co-founder and senior vice president of CanSino Biologics ($ 1 billion)

In addition to these new billionaires, other magnates of the pharmaceutical industry have accumulated increases in their wealth of 32.2 billion dollars (26.5 billion euros), “enough to vaccinate the entire population Indian, “the statement added.

“These vaccines have been publicly funded and should be, first and foremost, a global public good“Said Sandra Lhote-Fernandes, of Oxfam France, who called for” an urgent end to these monopolies “.

The European Commission assured this Wednesday that the European Union (EU) will be “constructive” within the World Trade Organization (WTO) during the evaluation of a patent lifting for anti-COVID vaccines, requested by Washington.

However, he said he will first propose to adopt measures to rapidly increase vaccine production.

The day before, African, European and other countries, as well as international organizations present at a meeting in Paris on African economies, requested the lifting of patents on anti-COVID vaccines to allow their production in Africa.

No obstante, “miembros claves del G20, como el Reino Unido y Alemania, continúan bloceando las iniciativas que apuntan a levantar las barreras ligadas a la propiedad intelectual” sobre las vacunas, denunció Oxfam, que señaló también una “posición Francia ambigua” the theme.

(With information from AFP)

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