Early in the Covid pandemic, Adrian Hill, head of Oxford university’s Jenner Institute, needed to find a company to roll out his group’s vaccine. There was a condition: the partner had to charge little in low- and middle-income countries, so that the vaccine wouldn’t be limited to the rich. “If there’s one thing that drives many of us here, the word is inequity,” says Hill, a slight, fast-talking 63-year-old.
The partner he found, AstraZeneca, went further — selling the Covid vaccine at cost in rich countries too during the pandemic. But the generosity backfired. Oxford’s vaccine was soon under siege, its safety wrongly questioned. “It was far more hassle than we expected.” The US financial press “wouldn’t leave us alone. They clearly didn’t like the idea of a low-cost vaccine, undercutting the market”. While other vaccine-makers made billions of dollars in profits during the pandemic, the Oxford vaccine failed to get approval in the US.
It was bad enough that “we weren’t selling an American vaccine in America. But selling it at nearly a tenth of the price of some other products is . . . ,” Hill pauses, “ . . . relevant.” In hindsight, would he do things differently? “It would be reasonable to charge a commercial price in rich countries.”