Eva De Bleeker, Belgium’s State Secretary for Budget and Consumer Protection, tweeted this table of vaccine costs out yesterday. It was swiftly deleted, perhaps when she realised the prices were commercially sensitive and secret by contract.

It shows the massive price differences between the various vaccines – the Moderna vaccine is some eight times the price of the Astra Zeneca vaccine. Perhaps reflecting its more novel development and greater efficacy. The pricing differentials go some way to explaining why an initially complacent European Commission declined to buy 500 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine. The Commission is now scrambling to secure millions of doses for use as soon as the sluggish EU medicines regulator (eventually) approves the vaccine.