Pfizer rides Paxlovid sales to better-than-expected quarter

The pill treatment Paxlovid brought in $7.5 billion in sales in the quarter and has generated more than $17 billion so far this year.

Associated Press

November 01, 2022 / 17:34 IST

Pfizer

Pfizers COVID-19 treatment helped the pharmaceutical giant balance tumbling international sales for its coronavirus vaccine and top third-quarter expectations.

The pill treatment Paxlovid brought in $7.5 billion in sales in the quarter and has generated more than $17 billion so far this year.

Sales from the vaccine Comirnaty, meanwhile, tumbled 66% to $4.4 billion in the quarter, mainly due to changes in a European Commission supply agreement that pushed dose deliveries into the fourth quarter. Sales also were hurt by slow demand in emerging markets.

But vaccine sales jumped in the United States after regulators approved a new booster dose and expanded access to children as young as 6 months old.

Pfizer also announced Tuesday that a large international study found vaccinating moms-to-be was nearly 82% effective at preventing severe cases of RSV, the common but scary respiratory virus, in their babies most vulnerable first 90 days of life.

COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

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