President Joe Biden puts his hand on a man’s shoulder during a visit to the coronavirus vaccination site (COVID-19) at Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia, USA, April 6, 2021.
Kevin Lemarque | Reuters
The Biden administration is preparing for the potential need for booster vaccines with the Covid-19 vaccine, although nothing is certain, a top US official said on Friday.
“The need for additional photos in the future is obviously a potential predictable event,” Andy Slavitt, chief adviser to President Joe Biden’s Covid response team, told reporters on Friday. “I want to emphasize that while there is certainly speculation about this, it is far from saying that this will happen.”
If Americans need booster shots, the U.S. government should likely make arrangements with drug manufacturers to provide additional doses and make plans for the distribution of the vaccine.
Slavitt said on Friday that the administration was considering the need to provide additional doses.
“I can assure you that when we do our planning, when the president orders the purchase of additional vaccines as he did, and when we focus on all the opportunities to expand production that we’re talking about here, we have a lot of scenarios like this in mind, ” he said.
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, in comments released for the first time on Thursday, said people will likely need a third dose, or a booster vaccine, of a Covid-19 vaccine within 12 months. from complete vaccination. Bourla also said that people may need to be vaccinated against the annual coronavirus, such as seasonal flu.
“A probable scenario is that there will probably be a need for a third dose, somewhere between six and 12 months, and then from there, there will be an annual revaccination, but all this needs to be confirmed. And again, the options will play a key role, “he told Bertha Coombs of CNBC during an event with CVS Health.
“It is extremely important to suppress the group of people who may be susceptible to the virus,” he added.
Pfizer and Moderna said their two-dose Covid-19 vaccines, which use a similar technology, remain extremely effective six months after the second dose. However, researchers still do not know how long the protection against the virus lasts six months after full vaccination, although health experts expect the protection to decrease after a while.
On Thursday, the scientific director of the Bov administration’s Covid response, David Kessler, said Americans should expect to receive booster shots to protect themselves against coronavirus variants. He told US lawmakers that currently authorized vaccines are extremely protective, but said the new options could “challenge” the effectiveness of the photographs.
“We don’t know everything right now,” he told the House Select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis.
“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 momentum. “
Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel told CNBC on Wednesday that the company hopes to have an autumn for its two-dose vaccine.