During the corona pandemic, Germany ordered vaccines worth around 13.1 billion euros. The Federal Ministry of Health confirmed this to the broadcasters NDR and WDR and the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, as the media reported on Thursday.
So far, the costs for the vaccine orders were not known: the contracts that the EU Commission had concluded with the manufacturers for all member states are subject to strict confidentiality. According to the information, the manufacturers Biontech/Pfizer and Moderna significantly increased prices in the pandemic.
According to the reports, most of the total number of vaccine orders that has now become known goes back to the tenure of Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU). According to documents that have been kept secret so far, the federal government ordered 556 million corona vaccine doses with a total value of 10.05 billion euros during Spahn’s tenure.
Germany ordered a total of 682 million vaccine doses
As the Federal Ministry of Health announced when asked by WDR, NDR and “SZ”, Germany has ordered a total of 672 million corona vaccine doses since the beginning of the pandemic. Converted, this means that a good eight vaccine doses were ordered for every inhabitant in Germany, from infants to the elderly.
So far, only fragmentary prices of the vaccines have become known. According to the media, for the first time there is a detailed order overview from the federal government for the individual vaccines, which shows the exact prices, quantities and order dates.
The price increases of the companies Biontech/Pfizer and Moderna in the middle of the pandemic are particularly striking. In December 2020, Germany ordered almost 39 million vaccine doses from Biontech/Pfizer at a price of around 15.50 euros per dose.
Nine months later, when the government ordered another 168 million vaccine doses, the average single dose was already around 23.20 euros – an increase of around 50 percent. Moderna increased the price by more than 50 percent from EUR 19.50 to EUR 29.70 after just three months.
Criticism of the price increase
The chairman of the Drug Commission of the German Medical Association, Wolf-Dieter Ludwig, told the media that he did not consider these prices to be fundamentally offensive because they were quite comparable to influenza vaccines, for example.
However, he finds the price increases in the middle of the pandemic disturbing. “I actually think that’s dubious, because given the economic sales, you could have stayed at the old price,” said Ludwig. However, it was the case that “we needed the vaccines” and “the pharmaceutical companies were able to push through these prices”.
On the other hand, there was clear criticism of the price increases from the Bundestag. CSU MP Stephan Pilsinger told the media: “If that’s true, then I think it’s completely unjustified. The federal government should not have gotten involved in such deals.”
The chairman of the budget committee of the Bundestag, the CDU politician and former head of the chancellery Helge Braun, admitted that he “neither knows the individual dose prices of the various vaccines nor the other contractual clauses”.
In his own words, Braun assumes that Germany still has purchase obligations for corona vaccines worth two billion euros for the current year 2023. “That is far too much in the foreseeable future, so that the destruction of a large part of the delivery would have to be expected,” said Braun. (AFP)
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