AstraZeneca swings to a loss despite £3,000,000,000 in Covid jab sales

AstraZeneca has swung to a loss despite taking around £3billion from sales of Covid jabs last year.

The British-Swedish firm initially opted not to make a profit from the ground-breaking new vaccine.

The drugs giant received £1.3billion for orders of the life-saving treatment in the final quarter alone, with 2.5billion doses distributed around the world during 2021.

But it posted a pre-tax loss of £196 million for last year, against profits of £2.9 billion in 2020.

This came in spite of revenues jumping by 38% as it was hit by costs of its £28.8 billion mega deal to buy US drug company Alexion Pharmaceuticals.

Towards the end of last year, AstraZeneca started to move away from providing its Covid-19 vaccine to countries on a not-for-profit basis.

The company had previously said it would only start to make money from the vaccine when coronavirus was no longer a pandemic.

Chief executive Pascal Soriot said the top priority was to protect global health.

Then in November 2021, the company signed a series of for-profit agreements for the vaccine which it expects to make a modest income on this year.

Mr Soriot said at the time that Covid was becoming endemic and he had ‘no regrets’ about changing tack as the jab had saved millions of lives around the world.

He hailed 2021 as a landmark year, despite the financial losses recorded.

He said: ‘AstraZeneca continued on its strong growth trajectory in 2021, with industry-leading research and development productivity, five of our medicines crossing new blockbuster thresholds and the acquisition and integration of Alexion.

‘We also delivered on our promise of broad and equitable access to our Covid-19 vaccine with 2.5billion doses released for supply around the world, and we made good progress on reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.’

It comes after a scientist who worked on the Covid jab said hundreds of thousands of people ‘probably died’ because scientists and politicians gave the AstraZeneca vaccine a bad reputation.

Professor Sir John Bell told the BBC that criticism of the jab had repercussions around the world.

‘They have damaged the reputation of the vaccine in a way that echoes around the rest of the world,’ he said.

‘I think bad behaviour from scientists and from politicians has probably killed hundreds of thousands of people – and that they cannot be proud of.’

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