EYECARE: Coronavirus BRIEFING: The Latest COVID-19 Data COVID-19 Vaccines Lift Pharma Company Profits By Staff Wednesday, May 12, 2021 3:00 PM The profitability of coronavirus vaccines has been in the spotlight since U.S. President Joe Biden said Wednesday that he was in support of temporarily lifting vaccine patents to make the production of the life-saving inoculations more financially feasible for poorer countries. EU leaders meanwhile remain divided over such a move. Company financial reports show that COVID-19 vaccine makers like Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca have seen their profits increase since the vaccine rollout, at times majorly.On Wednesday, stocks of several companies that benefit from COVID-19 vaccine sales took a nosedive on the news of Biden’s reversal. Moderna stocks, for example, were still down more than 6 percent at close that day. Stocks recovered somewhat as German chancellor Angela Merkel came out against patent waivers Thursday.While fluctuations in the stock market price have hurt drug makers in the short term, patent waivers would diminish the bottom line of companies involved with the development and production of COVID-19 vaccines in the long term. Pharma giants like Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer bring in billions of dollars of income every quarter from diverse sources, so the COVID bump was smaller for them. In the case of Pfizer, which has been a bigger producer than J&J, the year-over-year profit increase was a handsome 45 percent, however.Click here to read the full story from Statista.com.