UK: Pfizer Accused of Promoting 'Unlicensed' COVID Vaccine

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Facts

• A UK watchdog has accused Pfizer of damaging the pharmaceutical industry's reputation by promoting an unlicensed COVID vaccine on X, formerly Twitter, breaching regulatory codes.¹
• The Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority was referring to a November 2020 tweet by a US-based Pfizer official when the platform was still called Twitter.²
• The tweet, which claimed Pfizer's vaccine candidate was '95% effective in preventing COVID-19,' was retweeted by one of its senior UK-based employees and four other UK staffers.²
• Last month, the authority ruled that the drugmaker misused social media to 'misleadingly and illegally' advertise its vaccine. However, the firm termed the tweet 'accidental and unintentional.'³
• In October 2022, Pfizer admitted that it hadn't tested its COVID vaccine's efficacy to prevent transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from person to person before its market release.⁴
• However, Pfizer later claimed that the vaccine's clinical trial was never intended to cover its impact on transmission. It was designed only to evaluate the vaccine's efficacy in preventing disease caused by the COVID virus.⁴

Sources: ¹GB News, ²Fierce Pharma, ³The Telegraph and ⁴Associated Press.

Narratives

• Narrative A, as provided by WSJ. It's all too easy to accuse Pfizer of occasional mistakes years after things turned normal post-COVID. The company, which once swiftly produced a COVID vaccine and achieved record-breaking sales to pull the world back from the brink of a pandemic catastrophe, now faces a natural market downturn. This only highlights the unpredictable and thankless nature of the health industry.
• Narrative B, as provided by Guardian. Pfizer clearly played along with attempts to exaggerate its COVID vaccine's efficacy, violating consumer protection laws. It may deny the claims, but there's no escaping responsibility when its own senior executives spread such disinformation on social media — especially at a crucial moment during the pandemic. The world's courts must take the company to task.

Predictions