Profits from Covid-19 jabs have helped at least nine people become billionaires, a campaign group said Thursday, calling for an end to pharmaceutical corporations' "monopoly control" on vaccine technology.

The excessive profits made by pharmaceutical corporations with monopolies have helped in the creation of nine new billionaires, stated the People's Vaccine Alliance. Between them, the nine new billionaires have a combined net wealth of 19.3 billion dollars, enough to fully vaccinate all people in low-income countries 1.3 times.

Ahead of a G20 leaders global health summit, the People's Vaccine Alliance, whose members include Global Justice Now, Oxfam and UNAIDS, revealed this analysis.

The campaigners analysed Forbes Rich List data to highlight the massive wealth being generated by a handful of people from vaccines which were largely public funded.

Anna Marriott, Oxfam's Health Policy Manager, said, "What a testament to our collective failure to control this cruel disease that we quickly create new vaccine billionaires but totally fail to vaccinate the billions who desperately need to feel safe."

Among the list of new billionaires are Stéphane Bancel, Moderna's CEO; Ugur Sahin, BioNTech's CEO and co-founder; Timothy Springer, an immunologist and founding investor of Moderna; and Noubar Afeyan, Moderna's chairman; Juan Lopez-Belmonte, chairman of ROVI, a company that manufactures and packages the Moderna vaccine; Robert Langer, a scientist and founding investor in Moderna; Zhu Tao, co-founder of CanSino Biologics; Qiu Dongxu, co-founder and senior vice president at CanSino Biologics; and Mao Huinhoa, also a co-founder and senior vice president at CanSino Biologics.

In addition to the nine new billionaires, the alliance also found that eight existing billionaires have seen their combined wealth increase by more than $32 billion—or enough to fully vaccinate India, according to the group.

The People's Vaccine Alliance released its research ahead of this week's G20 Global Health Summit. Leaders of G20 nations are divided over the waiving of intellectual property rights for COVID-19 vaccines.

Image Source: Forbes