Russia's Covid-19 vaccine price to be lower than those of Pfizer, Moderna

The price per dose of the Russian coronavirus vaccine Sputnik V will be much lower than that of the vaccines of US drug giants Pfizer and Moderna, said the Russian vaccine's official Twitter account on Sunday.

"Translating pharma lingo: the announced price of Pfizer of USD 19.50 and Moderna of USD 25-USD 37 per dose actually means their price of USD 39 and USD 50-USD 74 per person. Two doses are required per person for the Pfizer, Sputnik V and Moderna vaccines. The price of Sputnik V will be much lower," the official account said.

Russia became the first country to register the world's first COVID-19 vaccine on August 11. Sputnik V was developed by the Gamaleya National Research Centre for Epidemiology and Microbiology of the Russian Healthcare Ministry.

On November 11, Russia had said that its vaccine Sputnik V is 92 per cent effective at protecting people from COVID-19 according to the first interim analysis.

On November 17, Moderna, in its official statement, had announced that the independent, U.S. NIH-appointed Data Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) for the Phase 3 study of mRNA-1273 has informed Moderna that the trial has met the statistical criteria pre-specified in the study protocol for efficacy, with a vaccine efficacy of 94.5%.

Similarly, on November 18, Pfizer had said that final results from the late-stage trial of its coronavirus vaccine was found to be 95 per cent effective and had no serious side effects on older people.