Pfizer Inc.’s chief executive said that low- and middle-income countries had opted not to order the company’s Covid-19 shot, in a letter posted online after the Biden administration said it supported waiving patents to expand global access to vaccines, Bloomberg reports.
“We reached out to all nations asking them to place orders so we could allocate doses for them,” Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla said in a letter addressed to Pfizer employees. “In reality, the high-income countries reserved most of the doses. I became personally concerned with that and I reached out to many heads of middle/low-income countries by letter, phone and even text to urge them to reserve doses because the supply was limited.”
Most low-and middle-income countries he contacted decided to place orders with other vaccine makers either because the underlying technology used in Pfizer’s shot was still untested, or there were local production options available, Bourla wrote.
He said some countries didn’t ever approve the vaccine, which Pfizer developed with its German partner BioNTech SE.
