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A third dose of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine will “likely” be needed within 12 months of receiving the previous two doses, the CEO of Pfizer says.
Additionally, “He also said it’s possible people will need to get vaccinated against the virus annually,” reports CNBC.
The news was revealed by CNBC in comments made to them by Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla on April 1.
“It is extremely important to suppress the pool of people that can be susceptible to the virus,” he told CNBC’s Bertha Coombs during an event with CVS Health. He added the vaccines will be an important tool in the fight against highly contagious variants.
Researchers still don’t know how long protection lasts once someone has been fully vaccinated.
Despite clinical trials, Pfizer researchers say they’re still unsure whether the vaccines “protect” longer than six months.
The company announced it was testing a vaccine booster in February, noting that “The rate of mutations in the current virus is higher than expected.”
“It’s a reasonable probability that we would end up with regular boosts,” said Chief Scientific Officer Mikael Dolsten. “And for potent vaccines, it may be that you need to do a strain change every few years, but not necessarily every year.”
Currently the CDC recommends injecting the second dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine 21 days from the first jab.