SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Operation Warp Speed is the federal government's push to get a coronavirus vaccine by January. The U.S. is spending billions of dollars to try to do that. Multiple vaccines are still in the clinical trial phase, but what kind of price tags can we expect to see once there is a working vaccine? NPR's pharmaceuticals correspondent Sydney Lupkin joins us. Sydney, thanks so much for being with us.
SYDNEY LUPKIN, BYLINE: Sure. Hi, Scott.
SIMON: Why are we talking about prices already? That usually happens after we know something's going to work.
LUPKIN: We usually don't get a price on a product until after it's been approved. But the pandemic changes things. For example, drug companies are also already starting to manufacture their vaccines, even though they're still testing them to make sure they're safe and effective. So governments are already signing deals to purchase them.
SIMON: What kind of prices are people talking about now?
LUPKIN: So doing the math on vaccine procurement contracts in the United States so far, we can figure out that drugmakers are charging between 4 and $20 a dose. But the CEO of Moderna, which is one of the leading companies in the vaccine race, said that its coronavirus vaccine was priced at between 32 and $37 per dose in some agreements with countries outside the U.S. But that's much higher than the prices we've seen so far, and people will likely need two doses of the vaccine for protection against the virus. Countries purchasing larger volumes, presumably the United States, would get a lower price. Still, that really ruffled some feathers among consumer advocates.
SIMON: At the same time, obviously, those numbers sound low compared to some of the truly staggering drug prices we've seen in the last few years.
LUPKIN: Right, but because in the pandemic we're spending differently on biopharmaceutical development than we normally do. Usually, the government will fund basic research and the drugmaker will foot the big bill on late-phase clinical trials and getting the drug over the FDA's finish line. Now, the U.S. government, taxpayers are spending on - a whole lot more on research development and manufacturing. And consumer advocates want to make sure the country gets a fair price, considering that large upfront investment.
SIMON: Sydney, how much is the U.S. paying Moderna for its work on the vaccine?
LUPKIN: Moderna got its first contract from the federal Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, back in mid-April for $483 million. Now, that doesn't include a purchase for any vaccine doses. It's aid to fund R&D and scale up manufacturing. And that amount could actually get bumped up to almost a billion dollars if the company meets all its goals under the contract.
But government spending on Moderna's vaccine doesn't end there. Moderna has been developing its coronavirus vaccine with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the NIH. It says it's spending an additional $410 million on the Moderna studies from preclinical work all the way to the phase three clinical trial that started on July 27 and is expected to include 30,000 people.
SIMON: So all totaled, the government could wind up spending well over a billion taxpayer dollars on just this vaccine, and that doesn't include the cost of buying it.
LUPKIN: That's right.
SIMON: What's next then?
LUPKIN: Well, we're waiting to find out how much the U.S. will spend on the Moderna vaccine when it's ready. And we have to see which of the vaccines will pass muster with the Food and Drug Administration.
SIMON: NPR's pharmaceuticals correspondent Sydney Lupkin, thanks so much for being with us.
LUPKIN: You bet.
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