(CU)_Britain’s COVID vaccine maker AstraZeneca announced on Thursday (Feb 11) that the firm more than doubled its net profit in 2020 to $3.2 billion, on account of the strong growth in sales of cancer drugs. The company said in a statement that profit after tax last year soared 139 per cent compared with 2019, while revenue from cancer drugs, including Lynparza and Tagrisso, jumped 23 per cent.
“Despite the significant impact from the pandemic, we delivered double-digit revenue growth [in 2020],” chief executive Pascal Soriot said.
“The consistent achievements in the pipeline, the accelerating performance of our business and the progress of the Covid-19 vaccine demonstrated what we can achieve,” he added.
Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical giant says it plans to accelerate its production of COVID-19 vaccines in order to support the demand in the European Union, following an agreement with Germany’s IDT Biologika.
Ahead of EU’s vaccine approval, AstraZeneca sparked fury in Brussels by announcing that the company would be unable to supply the agreed number of 400 million doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab, owing to a shortfall at the firm’s European plants.
This caused tensions between the EU and the pharmaceutical company, as the United Kingdom had already vaccinated millions of the public with the AstraZeneca vaccine, while the company’s first shipment to the EU was only delivered on Friday.
However, the vaccine maker has claimed that the main reasons for the delays is that the European Commission started to secure contracts much later that other countries, and that Britain was in an advantageous position since it made a deal a few months earlier than Brussels.
