Moderna Is Selling Covid Vaccine to African Union at Lower Price

(Bloomberg) -- Moderna Inc. is selling its Covid-19 vaccine to the African Union at $7 a dose, much less than the price other countries paid for the shot earlier this year.

John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a briefing Thursday that he’s “happy” to be able to announce the price that had been agreed. Moderna, which said last month it would make up to 110 million doses available to the African Union, is expected to deliver the first 15 million shots in December. That will help the world’s least-vaccinated continent accelerate the pace of inoculations.

Moderna’s vaccine was seen as one of the more expensive shots, with the company’s chief executive officer having given a range of $25 to $37 per shot for the two-dose vaccine. The African Union paid about $10 each for Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot and a little less than that for the two-dose Pfizer-BioNTech product.

The Moderna deal is in addition to an agreement that the company has with Covax, the program set up to deliver Covid-19 vaccines equitably around the world, for up to 500 million doses through 2022. In October, Moderna also said it plans to spend $500 million on a vaccine plant in Africa. 

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