Nine people, including scientists and vaccine manufacturing executives at U.S.-based Moderna and BioNTech and Chinese vaccine maker CanSino Biologics, have become billionaires during the pandemic, according to a new report by the People's Vaccine Alliance.
Five of the new billionaires include persons affiliated with Moderna, including Stephane Bancel, CEO of Moderna, whose worth is now $4.3 billion.
Business Insider reports that soaring stocks in Big Pharma — fueled by investors who expect huge profits from COVID-19 vaccines — crated these billionaires.
The money they have made off the pandemic could finance the vaccination of 776 million people in low-income countries, according to the report — a statistic that Anna Marriott, Oxfam's health policy manager, isn’t happy about, according to Business Insider.
"These billionaires are the human face of the huge profits many pharmaceutical corporations are making from the monopoly they hold on these vaccines," Marriott said. "These vaccines were funded by public money and should be first and foremost a global public good, not a private profit opportunity."
SOURCE: Business Insider May 21, 2021