Shoot your (multi-billion dollar) shot... Pfizer's sales hit a record high last quarter, surging 27% from last year to nearly $28B. More than half of that revenue came from Covid shots or Covid treatments. Meanwhile, total profit ballooned 78% to nearly $10B.
Halloween and vaccines... If it seems like everyone’s getting Covid, that’s because the dominant BA.5 Omicron subvariant is more transmissible than past ones. As Covid resurges, the FDA has asked vaccine-makers to target dominant subvariants for a wave of fall boosters. Last month, Pfizer and its vax partner BioNTech struck a $3.2B deal with the US gov't to deliver 105M doses ahead of an increasingly-likely fall vaccination campaign.
Out of mind ≠ out of sight… The pandemic used to dominate every headline and conversation. It isn’t monopolizing our daily lives like it was two years ago — from loosening restrictions to lessening news coverage. Still, the US is dealing with 130K new daily Covid cases and a rising death toll. For reference: daily cases are at the same high level that they were in November 2020. Now, health officials worry that the US will face an even bigger wave when summer ends — and vax-makers will be key to tackling it.