According to a new report published by IndexBox, in the first half of 2021, global vaccine exports were valued at $42.5 billion, a record high over the last decade.

This is 40% larger than the $30.5 billion gained in the whole of 2020. The worldwide COVID vaccination programme has driven vaccine exports – 7.1 billion doses have now been administered globally, and 28.01 million are administered each day.

Belgium leads in country rankings by the value of exports this year, followed by Germany and the US. This was largely driven by an increase in COVID vaccine production at Pfizer’s Belgian facility. In 2021, the factory’s capacity grew from 400 million to 1.3 billion doses per year.

Growing global demand has stimulated the rapid expansion of COVID vaccine production facilities in the EU.

The report revealed Germany to be the second-largest exporter in the world, and this was primarily made possible due to IDT Biologika signing an agreement with the British-Swedish multinational AstraZeneca and American conglomerate Johnson & Johnson, to expand vaccine production.

Renowned pharmaceutical companies predict further growth in demand for COVID vaccines in 2022. Pfizer earned $11.3 billion in revenue in the first half of 2021 and forecasts that sales for the entire year will reach $33.5 billion, up from previous estimates of $26 billion. These estimations are based on the 2.1 billion doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine which the company expects to manufacture and deliver by the end of the year.

Moderna sold $5.9 billion worth of COVID vaccines in the first half of the year and expects a total for the entire year to reach $20 billion for one million doses.

Pfizer and Moderna plan to expand COVID vaccine production capacity to 4B and 8B doses per year.