If you thought Pfiz­er was rak­ing it in with megablock­buster sales of its BioN­Tech-part­nered Covid-19 vac­cine — last pro­ject­ed at $36 bil­lion for 2021 — think again.

As the phar­ma gi­ant sends off its EUA sub­mis­sion for its an­tivi­ral pill to the FDA, the Wash­ing­ton Post, New York Times and oth­ers are re­port­ing that the US gov­ern­ment is plan­ning a $5 bil­lion con­tract to pur­chase 10 mil­lion cours­es of the treat­ment, dubbed Paxlovid.

Bar­clay’s an­a­lysts crunched the num­bers. Their con­clu­sion: That could mean an­oth­er $15 bil­lion to $25 bil­lion in 2022 rev­enue for Pfiz­er if all goes well.

Oral drugs that pa­tients can take at home soon af­ter they start see­ing symp­toms have been hailed as a ma­jor break­through for the pan­dem­ic. Mer­ck was the first to de­liv­er pos­i­tive Phase III re­sults with mol­nupi­ravir, and Pfiz­er quick­ly fol­lowed by show­ing that Paxlovid cut the risk of Covid-re­lat­ed hos­pi­tal­iza­tion or death by 89% com­pared to place­bo.

Mer­ck has fore­cast about $7 bil­lion in mol­nupi­ravir sales through the end of next year.

The re­port­ed terms of Pfiz­er’s sup­ply deal, Bar­clays an­a­lysts wrote, im­ply greater vol­ume but low­er pric­ing than the con­tracts Mer­ck ne­go­ti­at­ed. Where­as mol­nupi­ravir was sold at about $700 per course, Paxlovid’s price is es­ti­mat­ed at $300 to $500 per course.

Be­sides, they added, “the US gov­ern­ment se­cured vol­umes more than 3x what it has al­ready se­cured for Mer­ck’s mol­nupi­ravir (10mn vs. 3.1mn).”

To get the $15-25 bil­lion num­ber, they made the as­sump­tion that 90% of dos­es are dis­trib­uted.

Both com­pa­nies have pledged to share their patents with gener­ic mak­ers and non­prof­its so that de­vel­op­ing coun­tries can ac­cess them at a much low­er cost.

For a look at all End­points News coro­n­avirus sto­ries, check out our spe­cial news chan­nel.

Biotech is one of the smartest, best educated industries on the planet. PhDs abound. We’ve had a long enough track record to see a new generation of savvy, experienced execs coming together to run startups.

And in these times, they are being tested as never before.

Biotech is going through quite a rough patch right now. For 2 years, practically anyone with a decent resume and some half-baked ideas on biotech could start a company and get it funded. The pandemic made it easy in many ways to pull off an IPO, with traditional road shows shut down in exchange for a series of quick Zoom meetings. Generalist investors flocked as the numbers raised soared into the stratosphere.

It looks like Warren Buffett is sticking to ice cream and railroads for the moment.

The billionaire CEO of Berkshire Hathaway backed out of two major holdings in the pharma industry, Forexlive first reported, including a $410 million investment in AbbVie and a $324.4 million stake in Bristol Myers Squibb.

The move comes after Berkshire abandoned its Teva shares just last quarter, Bloomberg reported.

Nearly a year ago, more than 200 workers at Novartis’ Grimsby, UK, facility were able to hang on to their jobs after the pharma closed a Switzerland site as a part of its workforce restructuring plan. Now, it looks like those employees’ time is up, as the site has been sold, Grimsby Telegraph reported today.

The manufacturing site has been sold to Humber Industrials, a subsidiary of International Process Plants. None of the current staff members will be working with the new owners, however.

The latest wave of the pandemic — marked by Omicron and its sub-variants — has seen higher hospitalization rates for young children, health agencies have observed. That’s part of the reason why the FDA is authorizing a booster shot for kids between 5 and 11 years old.

Regulators on Tuesday OK’d a single booster dose of Pfizer and BioNTech’s mRNA vaccine for children who received their primary series with the same vaccine at least five months ago. By Pfizer’s count, that makes more than 8 million 5- to 11-year-olds eligible for another dose.

Usually reserved for making decisions on drug applications or enforcing what Congress stipulates, the FDA is now dipping its toe into the wild world of congressional politics as it attempts to fix a major court decision that could have a chilling effect on rare disease R&D.

The case in question from last October saw a US appeals court overturn a prior FDA court win, saying that the agency never should’ve approved a rare disease drug because a previously approved but more expensive drug with the same active ingredient has orphan drug exclusivity barring such an approval.

When bluebird bio’s gene therapy to treat beta thalassemia won European approval in 2019, the nearly $2 million per patient price tag for the potential cure seemed like a surmountable hurdle.

Fast forward two years later, and bluebird has withdrawn Zynteglo, the beta thal drug, along with the rest of its gene therapy portfolio from Europe, which the company said is generally unwilling to pay a fair price for the treatment.