President Joe Biden listens to Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla speak at Pfizer’s Kalamazoo manufacturing site on February 19, 2021, in Portage, Michigan.
Brendan Smialowski | AFP | Getty Images
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said people would “probably” need a booster dose of a Covid-19 vaccine within 12 months of full vaccination. His comments were made public on Thursday, but were recorded on April 1st.
He also said that people may need to be vaccinated against the virus every year.
“It’s extremely important to suppress the group of people who may be susceptible to the virus,” he told CNBC’s Bertha Coombs during an event with CVS Health. He added that vaccines will be an important tool in the fight against highly contagious variants.
Pfizer said earlier this month that its Covid-19 vaccine was more than 91% effective in protecting against Covid and more than 95% against serious illness up to six months after the second dose. The Moderna vaccine, which uses technology similar to Pfizer’s, was also shown to be very effective six months after the second dose.
Pfizer data were based on more than 12,000 vaccinated participants. However, researchers say more data is still needed to determine whether protections last after six months.
Earlier Thursday, Biden administration chief scientific officer Covid’s response, David Kessler, said Americans should expect to receive booster shots to protect themselves against coronavirus variants.
Kessler told U.S. lawmakers that currently authorized vaccines are very protective, but noted that new variants could “challenge” the effectiveness of shots.
“We don’t know everything at the moment,” he told the House Select Subcommittee on the coronavirus response.
“We are studying the durability of the antibody response,” he said. “It sounds strong, but there’s a certain decrease in that and certainly the variants are challenging … they make these vaccines work more. So I think for planning purposes only, we should just hope we should empower. “
In February, Pfizer and BioNTech said they were testing a third dose of the Covid-19 vaccine to better understand the immune response against new variants of the virus.
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