The annual revaccination against COVID will become the “most likely scenario” that will keep people “really safe,” since the virus mutates and immunity wanes, according to the Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla.
Speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Monday, Bourla said,
I did make a projection months ago that the most likely scenario, it is that we will need after the third dose annual revaccinations against COVID for multiple reasons because of the immunity that will be waning, because of the virus that I’m sure will be maintained around the world for the years to come and also because of the need of variants that will emerge. I’m more confident right now that this will be the case than I was when I made the projection. I think we are going to have an annual revaccination. I don’t know how we’re going to call it but [it] will be an annual revaccination and that should be able to keep us really safe.”
Indeed, Bourla maintained back in September that a “return to normal life” will only be possible with the annual vaccinations against COVID. Because the SARS-CoV-2 variants “will continue coming,” the Pfizer top executive said that we would be be able “to live our lives without having vaccinations.” Bourla added that Pfizer could manufacture vaccines potent enough to generate the immune response that would “last at least a year.”
The company, however, must try harder to perfect the shot’s effectiveness. According to Pfizer itself, its vaccines are only effective for half a year, and then a recipient should get a booster to refresh the protection, according to FDA documents. The data were released when the nation’s top regulators at the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee first discussed the need for booster shots back in September.
To support its case, Pfizer cited a study from healthcare company Kaiser Permanente that showed that protection against COVID dropped from 88 percent in the first month after receiving the second dose to 47 percent after five months.
“Real-world data from Israel and the United States suggest that rates of breakthrough infections are rising faster in individuals who were vaccinated earlier in the vaccination campaigns compared to those who have been vaccinated more recently,” the company argued.
In addition to that, back in August, Bourla shared that Pfizer was very much focused on “keeping up with the variants [of COVID-19].” “Every time that variant appears in the world, our scientists are getting their hands around it. They are researching to see if this variant can escape the protection of our vaccine,” Bourla announced, as The New American reported. The company, per its CEO, was already able to have a vaccine “tailor-made” within 95 days of the identification of any new “variant of concern.”
And it looks as if the current vaccines that were designed against the original strain of the Wuhan virus are not as effective against the new variants, as seen in the case with Delta, when heavily vaccinated countries and various U.S. states were experiencing a surge of infections. Pfizer, a bit confusingly, insisted the breakthrough infections occurred due to the waning protection of the vaccine and not because of the virus’s ability to escape the immune response caused by the vaccines, per the aforementioned September documents.
As the most recent anecdotal proof of the Pfizer shot becoming drastically less effective against the newest COVID variant, Omicron, two triple-vaccinated Israeli doctors got infected with the new strain, per a Reuters report. The country that started administering Pfizer boosters to the general population in late August started to discuss the rollout of a fourth shot in September.
Pfizer is not the only company that is working on an annual vaccination program. Top executives at Moderna and Johnson & Johnson have said people would need to revaccinate against COVID seasonally, as they do against the flu.
“Unfortunately, as [the virus] spreads it can also mutate,” J&J CEO Alex Gorsky said in February 2021. “Every time it mutates, it’s almost like another click of the dial so to speak where we can see another variant, another mutation that can have an impact on its ability to fend off antibodies or to have a different kind of response not only to a therapeutic but also to a vaccine.”
Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel argued in April that annual COVID vaccine boosters will be commonplace going forward, saying the coronavirus “is not going away” and it’s “not leaving the planet.”
In September, Bancel announced the company is developing a single-dose vaccine that will combine a two-in-one booster shot that protects against both COVID and flu.
The scientists at the American Medical Association are not convinced annual vaccinations against COVID will be necessary.
In an article titled “COVID-19 Vaccine Makers Plan for Annual Boosters, but It’s Not Clear They’ll Be Needed” published on November 21, the authors argue that existing vaccines are already providing people with “long immune memory.”
“Emerging data consistently show that vaccine effectiveness against asymptomatic and mild COVID-19 infections declines over time, although protection against disease severe enough to require hospitalization generally remains high,” per the article.
But again, COVID itself has a 99.98-percent survival rate for healthy adults, while the long-term side effects of the vaccines remain unknown. All of the currently available COVID shots for adults have yet to complete clinical trials, with the earliest completion date set for May of 2023. As for the short term, the safety of the shots is more than uncertain, since they are associated with numerous health complications ranging from mild to deadly.
The CDC currently recommends all adults get a booster shot. Those who got Pfizer or Moderna should return for a third dose at least six months after completing the vaccination series. Those who got J&J may get boosted after two months.
