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Comment by NiceWayToDoIT | Hacker News Reader

Uk population is around 67 million (3 doses would be 210m) does anyone know why is the order 517 million vaccine in total?

Are those orders by UK or orders to company producing vaccines?

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It was not clear which vaccine development projects would succeed and which would not. For a reasonably wealthy country, the cost of the vaccine doses is completely negligible compared to the cost of the pandemic. This is why it made sense to massively overpurchase doses.

Thanks, I was curious to check :

Pfizer-BioNTech $19.50 per dose

Moderna $25-$37 per dose

AstraZeneca $3-4 (U.S.) in the UK and U.S

Johnson & Johnson $10 per dose

Sputnik V Vaccine $10 per dose

Sinovac Biotech $60 per dose in China ($29.75 per dose)

https://www.biospace.com/article/comparing-covid-19-vaccines...

Interesting enough testes are ranging from £50-250 and usually u need few, even self-test kits have similar range. I wonder is there a way to have a really cheap tests (£3-5) ?

I guess it would be interesting to find out PCR test cost break down.

Rapid antigen test kits have reached retail prices well below 1€ now. They probably cost cents to produce.

I guess a significant factor in the cost of PCR tests are the thermocyclers and the lab staff. Not nearly as easy to scale as rapid test kits.

Cost of staff is understandable, but here self-kits are selling for £89 which looks greatly as exploit of unfortunate circumstances.

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