Moderna offers COVID-19 shot at $7 to African Union: Africa CDC head

Moderna Inc has offered to sell its COVID-19 vaccines to the African Union at $7 a shot, head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control John Nkengasong said on Thursday, half the price paid by the United States earlier in the year.

It is also a substantial discount to what other buyers like the European Union have agreed this year, part of a broader trend for drugmakers to sell at lower prices to lower-income countries.

"I am happy to say that a dose of the Moderna vaccine will be $7. That is what is being offered to us," Nkengasong told a weekly virtual media briefing.

Earlier this year, Moderna said its deals outside the United States had been struck at between $22 and $37 per dose. As those did not include a lower income country, this is the first insight into the kind of prices Moderna is prepared to charge poorer countries.

Nkengasong said there was no doubt that a fourth wave of the pandemic was coming to Africa, where only 6 percent of the eligible population has been fully vaccinated.

Africa has to date recorded 8.5 million cases and 220,000 deaths, said Nkengasong.