Pfizer, the first company to get U.S. Emergency use authorization for a COVID-19 vaccine, swung to a small profit in the fourth-quarter as it started shipping vaccines globally.
The drugmaker expects roughly USD 15 billion in revenue this year from the vaccine, which won emergency clearance in mid-December from U.S. Regulators and continues to rack up approvals across the globe. The two-dose vaccine is about 95 per cent effective and is one of only a few vaccines available to check the global pandemic.
Rising medicine sales helped offset big increases in spending on research and production as the New York company manufactures hundreds of millions of doses of the COVID-19 shot and pushes forward on research gauging its effectiveness in different patient groups, such as teens and people with compromised immune systems.