While South Africa shared its Covid-19 vaccine price publicly, the prices paid by the European Union (EU) are only publicly known due to an accidental tweet of the EU’s price list by Belgium’s Budget State Secretary, Eva De Bleeker.
Pharmaceutical companies have provided a range of justifications for charging different countries different prices for the same vaccines. These justifications include the income-level and size of procuring countries, the provision of public investment towards vaccine development and manufacturing scale-up by countries, the timing of orders and delivery, and the willingness of buyers to maintain price secrecy.
While these justifications may sound rational and even fair at face value, they often do not hold up against evidence of what countries are actually paying.