President Joe Biden listens to Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla speak at the Pfizer Kalamazoo plant 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 1.
He also said that people may need to be vaccinated against the virus annually.
“It is extremely important to suppress the group of people who may be susceptible to the virus,” he told Bertha Coombs of CNBC during an event with CVS Health. He added that vaccines will be an important tool in the fight against highly contagious variants.
Researchers still do not know how long the protection against the virus lasts after someone has been completely vaccinated.
Pfizer said earlier this month that the Covid-19 vaccine was more than 91% effective in protecting against Covid and more than 95% effective against severe disease up to six months after the second dose. The Moderna vaccine, which uses technology similar to Pfizer’s, has proven to be extremely effective at six months.
Pfizer data were based on more than 12,000 vaccinated participants. However, researchers say more data is needed to determine whether protection lasts after six months.
Earlier on Thursday, Biden administration scientific director 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 extremely protective, but said the new options could “challenge” the effectiveness of the shots.
“We don’t know everything right now,” he told the House Select subcommittee on the coronavirus response.
“We’re studying the durability of the antibody response,” he said. “It sounds strong, but there’s a slight decrease in that, and no doubt the variations cause … they make these vaccines harder to work with. So I think for planning purposes, just for planning purposes, I think they would we have to expect growth. “
In February, Pfizer and BioNTech said they were testing a third dose of the Covid-19 vaccine to better understand the immune response to new variants of the virus.
Late last month, the National Institutes of Health began testing a new vaccine from Moderna designed to protect against a problematic variant first found in South Africa.