Pfizer demanded secret upfront payment for its vaccine, FOI documents reveal

Pfizer wanted Aussie taxpayers to pay for its Covid vaccine even if it didn’t work, and it may explain why the government waited longer to clinch a deal. See explosive document.

Exclusive: Drug company giant Pfizer demanded a massive secret upfront payment from Australia for its experimental Covid vaccine, it can be revealed.

And if the company’s jab failed to get regulatory approval or was never manufactured, the Australian taxpayer would have forfeited the right to recover half the estimated $240 million down payment.

The financial demand — laid bare in bombshell Health Department documents — was so sensitive, the federal government went to extraordinary lengths to hide it from the public.

The original documents, released under Freedom of Information (FOI) in August, show the company’s proposed contract clause for the 10 million doses it offered to deliver Australia in 2021.

“Upfront payment 50% refundable if reg (regulatory) approval not obtained or not manufactured and delivered,” the FOI records says.

But almost eight weeks on, not a trace of evidence of the pharma giant’s outrageous demand can be found on the department’s website.

The original, unredacted FOI report — titled “Vaccine company liaison – meeting between Department and Pfizer” — which shows the attempted money-grab. Picture: Supplied

In the US, Pfizer was charging $US19.50 ($A26.64) per dose for its vaccine and leaked documents show Europe paid $15.50 euros ($A23.95) per dose.

If Australia paid a similar price to Europe, the bill for our original 10 million doses of the vaccine would have been almost $240 million.

The federal government has been under fire for waiting longer than the US and European countries to clinch a deal with Pfizer for supplies of its vaccine.

The US, UK and other countries had already ordered a billion doses of the experimental vaccine months ahead of Australia allowing their vaccination campaigns to kick off much earlier.

Pfizer’s request for the upfront payment when the vaccine had not yet been proven might be one explanation for the reticence of the federal government to reach a deal with the pharma giant.

At one point in the drawn-out purchase debate, former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd talked to the global head of Pfizer and claimed to have been responsible for accelerating deliveries of the vaccine.

Pfizer released a statement denying he was responsible.

Pfizer will earn nearly $46 billion from its Covid vaccine this year, with sales and profits likely to be even higher now studies have found its effectiveness wanes after six months and people need a booster dose.

Pfizer will earn nearly $46 billion from its Covid vaccine this year. Picture: AFP

The company refused to comment on whether it received any upfront payments from Australia when contracts were signed, nor whether it had asked for detail to be scrubbed from the FOI document.

“The subject of any negotiations with the Government and the terms of any agreements reached with the Government are confidential,” a spokesperson for Pfizer said.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health said details of the Advance Purchase Agreement (APA) with Pfizer for the purchase of the company’s Covid-19 vaccine are commercial-in-confidence.

“The relevant documents were published on the department’s disclosure log in accordance with the requirements of the FOI Act,” the spokesperson said.

“The department subsequently identified that a small amount of exempt confidential commercial information had not been redacted from the documents prior to publication on the disclosure log. The exempt information has been deleted from the documents on the disclosure log in accordance with the FOI Act.”

Opposition health spokesman Mark Butler said while countries like the UK and the US were busy signing vaccine supply deals with Pfizer in July 2020, “the FOI documents showed Scott Morrison’s Government ignored Pfizer’s request for urgent meetings”.

“Australians ended up at the back of the vaccine queue because Scott Morrison didn’t think the rollout was a race and was too slow to act,” he said.

Drug companies were last year demanding liability protection, patent ownership and leeway on delivery dates and pricing when reaching supply deals with governments around the world.

This is even though many were in receipt of billions of dollars of government and charitable funding to help them develop the jabs.

There is now a push to end their patent protection so poorer countries can make their own versions of the vaccines to protect their populations against the virus.

Originally published as Pfizer demanded secret upfront payment for its vaccine, FOI documents reveal