Vaccine Makers Mull Price Increase For COVID-19 Boosters Amid Falling Demand

With the dwindling demand for COVID-19 shots, vaccine makers such as Pfizer Inc PFE, BioNTech SE BNTX, Moderna Inc MRNA, and Novavax Inc NVAX could possibly raise prices to meet Wall Street forecasts.
The hike could be as much as three times current levels.
Citing a recent poll by Kaiser Family Foundation, Reuters reported that two-thirds of American adults do not plan on getting a COVID vaccine soon.
Analysts expect the U.S. market to be as low as one-third the size of the flu.
Quoting Pfizer's executive Angela Lukin, Reuters said the company could roughly quadruple the price of its COVID-19 vaccine to about $110 to $130 per dose from $30 after the U.S government's current purchase program expires in 2023.
Related: European Advisory Committee Backs Pfizer/BioNTech's COVID Shot For Younger Kids.
Pfizer said it expects the COVID-19 market to be about the size of the flu shot market annually for adults but that the pediatric market would take longer to build.
Over the first six weeks of the roll-out, around 14.8 million people received the updated COVID-19 booster shots. In the first six weeks of the 2021 vaccination campaign, over 22 million people received their third shot, even though only older and immunocompromised people were eligible.
Uptake of the boosters in the European Union did not spike as expected even after new updated omicron-targeted shots were released.