Article: The unprecedented challenge of pricing a coronavirus vaccine

Published in pharmaphorum 

Using findings from our recent COVID-19 impact study, Market Access Directors Rachel Howard and Brett Gardiner and Consultant Suzan Serip explore the challenges of pricing a coronavirus vaccine. Read our latest article for pharmaphorum.

The optimal pricing strategy for a new vaccine involves setting a fair and sustainable price that enables the eligible population in need across the world to gain access, while also rewarding innovation and supporting further research and development.

The need for a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine is arguably more urgent, and more global, than ever before for a vaccine. As the 130+ vaccine candidates currently in development progress through clinical testing, a key question for their manufacturers is how COVID-19 might be changing the equation when it comes to what a responsible pricing strategy might look like. At the same time, payers are also faced with needing to prepare and plan for how to react and manage this situation.

Payers’ expectations regarding the pricing of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines was one of a number of areas we explored in the first wave of our latest syndicated study, in which we set out to assess the impact of COVID-19 on biopharmaceutical market access through interviews conducted with payers and advisors in the US, Europe, Brazil, and China during April and May 2020.

This article shares selected insights from our study that are relevant to this topic, bringing the perspectives of the experts we interviewed together with a review of the recent commentary and discourse around fair pricing strategies for COVID-19 technologies more generally.