WHEN: Today, Wednesday, May 25, 2022
WHERE: CNBC’s “Squawk Box”
Following are excerpts from the unofficial transcript of a CNBC interview with Pfizer Chairman & CEO Albert Bourla on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” (M-F, 6AM-9AM ET) today, Wednesday, May 25th for Davos 2022 in Davos, Switzerland. Following is a link to video on CNBC.com:
All references must be sourced to CNBC.
BOURLA ON PFIZER’S DRUGS FOR LOWER INCOME COUNTRIES AT LOWER PRICES
ALBERT BOURLA: What we announced today was Pfizer will provide all the patent protected medicines, all, to all low-income countries and plus all the low income countries graduated from this status 10 years ago. So this is 45 countries, 1.2 billion of people, we’ll give all our patent products at cost and in fact today, I stood together with the president of Rwanda, the president of Malawi and their other three countries that they’re together with us that they signed already a letter of intent to be the first five countries to pilot this initiative.
BOURLA ON COVID-19
BOURLA: I think if people are asking are we going to, when the virus will disappear, I don’t think that will happen. I think the real question though it is when can we get our lives back, when we have normal, I think we can get it now because I think we have the means, vaccines, we have the means treatment, no one should die.
BOURLA ON MONKEYPOX
BOURLA: I don’t have all the information ahead of me. With everything I know, I wouldn’t worry much I think but that doesn’t mean that we should relax, right? I think we should monitor to see where the situation goes. Clearly doesn’t transmit as much as other viruses including COVID so that can become a pandemic but you never know. And clearly, there are solutions for this one if there are needed.
BOURLA ON INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
BOURLA: I told many of the people that are raising the issue of IP. I assure them that we will have in few months, hundreds of millions available and I warned them that the problem will be that people will not be doing it so they should start educational campaigns and they should start building infrastructure on the ground. Unfortunately, maybe I didn’t insist much, maybe they didn’t do it. We all should share the blame but the countries were not ready to receive vaccines.
