Analysis: What happens when the U.S. government stops buying Covid-19 vaccines?

What happens when the government stops buying Covid-19 vaccines? The federal government has distributed Covid-19 vaccines and treatments for free so far, but most likely, the handouts won’t last forever. Rachel Cohrs STAT

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At some point, Covid-19 vaccines and treatments will be bought and sold just like other drugs and medical products. But big questions loom about how and when the transition will happen, about how bumpy it will be.

The issue has gained urgency in recent weeks as Congress has been reluctant to provide the Biden administration with any additional funds to combat the Covid-19 pandemic. That means the government is out of money to purchase more vaccines, oral antivirals, and therapeutics, not to mention next-generation vaccines and therapies tailored to particular variants.

The chief executives of both Pfizer and Moderna have also begun to face questions from investors about how they plan to sell their Covid-19 products through regular health care system channels. They say they’ve started the planning process to rely less on the federal government.

Before the government steps out of the highly unusual role it has played in buying and giving out Covid-19 medicines, a whole lot of regulatory planning and coordinating with pharmacies, providers, and companies that ship and buy medical products has to happen first. And once the transition happens, it means products to fight the pandemic will be subject to all the problems evident in other disease areas — like possible price gaming by drugmakers or inequitable access to potentially lifesaving treatments.

Even if Covid-19 vaccines and medicines transition to a more normal business model, some experts are concerned that the demands of mitigating deaths during a global pandemic are anything but normal.

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