A senior official from the Israeli health ministry has defended the price the Israeli government paid for Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccines, saying it was “ridiculously low” compared to the economic cost of a national lockdown.
Israel has vaccinated a bigger proportion of its population than any other country to date, but has faced hard questions over the apparent premium it paid to Pfizer for its shots.
Israeli authorities have not publicly disclosed what the government paid for Pfizer’s vaccine, developed in partnership with Germany’s BioNTech. But Reuters quoted an Israeli government source last week saying it was paying “around $30 a dose or around twice the price abroad”.
“I do believe we may have paid more than the EU. We are a small market (and) our terms may be less favourable. But the price of vaccines are so ridiculously low in comparison to the terrible economic damage of every day of national closure that this argument is nonsense,” said Asher Salmon, head of international relations at the Israeli ministry of health. “We paid the minimum we were able to pay,” he added.
Israel expected to vaccinate 70% of its population by mid-April, said Salmon. It has already vaccinated close to 2-million people, more than a fifth of its population with Pfizer’s shot, and expects shipments of Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine to arrive next week, he said in a media briefing on Israel’s vaccination strategy.
Unlike many other countries, which have started their immunisation programmes with health-care workers and only the very old, Israel’s first phase has included health-care workers, people over the age of 60 and first responders such as the police and firefighters. First responders have been called to vaccination sites at the last minute at the end of the day, to ensure no vaccine doses go to waste, said Salmon.
Pfizer’s vaccine requires ultra-cold storage, and can only be stored in an ordinary freezer for a few days.
Salmon said the government had started negotiations with pharmaceutical companies developing Covid-19 vaccines two months after identifying its first case in February. “We started investigating vaccines quite early. Our first call was with AstraZeneca in April,” he said. Discussions began shortly after that with Moderna and several other pharmaceutical companies, he said.
Israel planned to begin vaccinating prisoners of all nationalities next week, he said.
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