Up­dat­ed: Pfiz­er plans $3.5B in cost cuts amid Covid slide, while Mod­er­na sticks by guid­ance

Pfiz­er will be­gin a com­pa­ny-wide cost-cut­ting pro­gram this year and next, part of a plan to bring the com­pa­ny’s costs in line with a world where sales of its Covid prod­ucts are wan­ing as the coro­n­avirus be­comes one more in a host of res­pi­ra­to­ry ill­ness­es.

Fri­day’s an­nounce­ment that the drug­mak­er will make $3.5 bil­lion in cost cuts was trig­gered by a re­vised agree­ment with the US gov­ern­ment for sup­ply of Pfiz­er’s an­tivi­ral pill Paxlovid. Un­der the new terms, the gov­ern­ment is re­turn­ing large num­bers of dos­es that had been dis­trib­uted around the coun­try as ac­cess to the drug switch­es from an emer­gency, gov­ern­ment-run ef­fort to one run through the com­mer­cial mar­kets.

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