Pfizer Inc’s CEO says he believes people will ‘likely’ need a third dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
During a panel discussion hosted by CNBC in conjunction with CVS Health taped on April 1, Albert Bourla said a potential booster shot would be administered six to 12 months of being fully vaccinated.
Bourla added that he thinks it is possible that people will need to be immunized against coronavirus annually.
‘There are vaccines that are like polio that one dose is enough…and there are vaccines like flu than you need every year,’ he said in the segment, aired on Wednesday.
‘The Covid virus looks more like the influenza virus than the polio virus.’
However, more data is needed to determine if protection lasts beyond six months.
Earlier on Thursday, Dr David Kessler, the Biden administration’s chief science officer of COVID response, said that Americans should expect to receive booster shots, especially as variant continue to spread.
‘We are studying the durability of the antibody response,’ he said during testimony before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Response.
‘It seems strong but there is some waning of that and no doubt the variants challenge…they make these vaccines work harder. So I think for planning purposes, planning purposes only, I think we should expect that we may have to boost.’
Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech began studying a third dose of their vaccine in late February.
The booster shot is aimed at protecting against future variants, which may be better at evading antibodies from vaccine than earlier strains of the virus.
About 144 volunteers will be given the third dose, mostly those who participated in the vaccine’s early-stage U.S. testing last year.
The vaccine uses part of the pathogen’s genetic code called messenger RNA, or mRNA, to get the body to recognize the coronavirus and attack it if a person becomes infected.
In the jab, known as BNT162b2, the mRNA encodes for all of the spike protein found on the outside of the virus that it uses to enter and infect cells.
