In the week following the discovery of the Omicron strain of the SARS-Cov-2 coronavirus, the wealth of big pharma executives and stockholders skyrocketed, with eight top Pfizer and Moderna shareholders making a combined $10.3 billion.

According to statistics from Global Justice Now, the top eight shareholders of Pfizer and Moderna earned a total of $10.31 billion last week as share prices rose in reaction to Omicron's climb.

Moderna's stock soared after the announcement, closing at $310.61 a share on Wednesday, December 1, up 13.61 percent from $273.39 per share the day before.

Pfizer's stock increased 7.4% to $54.68 per share, from $50.91 per share.

In the week after the announcement, Moderna's CEO, Stephane Bancel, became more than $824 million richer, with the value of his shares going from $6,052,522,978 to $6,876,528,630.

Bancel has declined to disclose the Moderna vaccine's formula with the World Health Organization, which is assisting Bancel in scaling up the manufacture of mRNA vaccines through its new South African base.

Tim Bierley, a pharmaceutical campaigner for Global Justice Now, cautioned that drug corporations understood that horrific levels of disparity in vaccinations would provide the ideal circumstances for new variations to develop.

"They allowed Covid-19 to spread indiscriminately in low- and middle-income nations." And now, with a crisis that they helped create, the same pharmaceutical executives and stockholders are gaining ground. "It's completely disgusting," he stated emphatically.

He said that such pharmaceutical businesses inhibited efforts to distribute vaccinations more equally over the world.

He said that the firms profited "abundantly" from the outbreak, selling two of the most costly medications in history. It's past time to send the WHO prescriptions for these life-saving treatments so that we may finally put a stop to the epidemic."