‘COVID-19 Vaccines Create At Least 9 New Billionaires’

At least nine individuals have become new billionaires since the start of the pandemic, “thanks to the excessive profits pharmaceutical corporations with monopolies on COVID vaccines are making,” the People’s Vaccine Alliance (PVA) bared in a statement on Thursday, May 20.

“Between them, the nine new billionaires have a combined net wealth of $19.3 billion, enough to fully vaccinate all people in low-income countries 1.3 times,” the statement read.

The PVA said these countries have received only 0.2 percent of the global supply of vaccines, despite being home to 10 percent of the world’s population.

PVA is a movement of health, humanitarian and human rights organizations, past and present world leaders, health experts, faith leaders and economists that are advocating for the end of intellectual property protections for COVID-19 vaccines.  The purpose is to ensure that the jabs are manufactured rapidly and made available to all countries, free of charge.

The group, which includes Oxfam, UNAIDS and Global Justice Now, analyzed Forbes Rich List data published last April 6 to highlight the “massive wealth being generated by a handful of people from vaccines which were largely public funded.

Topping the list of new billionaires are the chief executive officers  (CEO) of Moderna and BioNTech SE, each with a wealth over $4 billion or more.

It also includes two of Moderna’s founding investors and the company’s chairperson as well as the CEO of a company with a deal to manufacture and package the Moderna vaccine.

The final three new vaccine billionaires are all co-founders of the Chinese vaccine company CanSino Biologics.

Here’s the complete list of the new nine billionaires:

1. Stéphane Bancel  – Moderna’s CEO (worth $4.3 billion)

2. Ugur Sahin – CEO and co-founder of BioNTech (worth $4 billion)

3. Timothy Springer  –  an immunologist and founding investor of Moderna (worth $2.2 billion)

4. Noubar Afeyan – Moderna’s chairman (worth $1.9 billion)

5. Juan Lopez-Belmonte – chairman of ROVI, a company with a deal to manufacture and package the Moderna vaccine (worth $1.8 billion)

6. Robert Langer – a scientist and founding investor in Moderna (worth $1.6 billion)

7. Zhu Tao co-founder and chief scientific officer at CanSino Biologics (worth $1.3 billion)

8. Qiu Dongxu, co-founder and senior vice president at CanSino Biologics (worth $1.2 billion)

9. Mao Huinhoa, also co-founder and senior vice president at CanSino Biologics (worth $1 billion)

Aside from this, PVA revealed that eight existing billionaires have seen their combined wealth increase by $32.2 billion.  This amount is enough to fully vaccinate everyone in India, now the epicenter of the pandemic.

PVA added these eight billionaires have “extensive portfolios in the COVID-19 vaccine pharmaceutical corporations.” They are the following:

“What a testament to our collective failure to control this cruel disease that we quickly create new vaccine billionaires but totally fail to vaccinate the billions who desperately need to feel safe,” Anna Marriott, Oxfam’s health policy manager, said.

Marriott added these billionaires are the “human face of the huge profits many pharmaceutical corporations are making from the monopoly they hold on these vaccines.”

“These vaccines were funded by public money and should be first and foremost a global public good, not a private profit opportunity. We need to urgently end these monopolies so that we can scale up vaccine production, drive down prices and vaccinate the world,” she stressed.

According to Winnie Byanyima, executive director of Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, “the pandemic has come at a terrible human cost, so it is obscene that profits continue to come before saving lives.”

“While the companies making massive profits from COVID vaccines are refusing to share their science and technology with others in order to increase the global vaccine supply, the world continues to face the very real risk of mutations that could render the vaccines we have ineffective and put everyone at risk all over again,” Byanyima said.

PVA pointed out that vaccine billionaires are made as stocks in pharmaceutical firms rise rapidly in anticipation of huge profits from the COVID-19 vaccines over which these firms have monopoly control.

The alliance warned that these monopolies allow pharmaceutical corporations total control over the supply and price of vaccines, “pushing up their profits while making it harder for poor countries, in particular, to secure the stocks they need.”

The report was released ahead of G20 Global Health Summit in Italy on Friday, May 21.

The PVA said key members of the G20, including the United Kingdom and Germany, are blocking moves to boost supply by ending companies’ monopoly control of vaccine production as COVID-19 continues to devastate lives in countries like India and Nepal where only a tiny fraction of the population has been vaccinated.

Earlier this month, the PVA said the United States backed proposals by South Africa and India at the World Trade Organization to temporarily break up these monopolies and lift the patents on COVID-19 vaccines.

This move has the support of over 100 developing countries, Spain, Pope Francis and over 100 world leaders and Nobel laureates, PVA noted.

While UK and Germany are against the move, the PVA said Canada and France are sitting on the fence.