Albert Bourla, the CEO of pharma giant Pfizer has warned that the two doses of the vaccine might not be enough to provide a strong protection against COVID-19 and its omicron variant. Bourla added that the original shots have lost some of its efficacy and might not be effective in preventing the hospitalizations. The CEO was talking during an interview at JP Morgan’s healthcare conference that stressed on the importance of the third vaccine that would help to boost the protection against the new omicron variant.
Bourla stressed that the two doses are not enough for the omicron variant and the third dose would provide protection against deaths and will also provide protection against hospitalizations. The CEO while talking about the new variant said that it is a tough target when compared to the earlier variants. The omicron has a number of mutations that have the potential to evade some of the protection that is provides by the two original shots by Pfizer. Bourla explained that the first thing that was lost after the second dose was the protection against infections and two months later, even the protection against the hospitalizations also went down significantly which is why everyone is worried.
Data from the United Kingdom has revealed that two vaccine doses are 52 percent effective while preventing hospitalizations at 25 weeks after receiving the second shot. The data has also mentioned that the two doses of Pfizer’s vaccine is just ten percent effective to prevent infection from omicron nearly 20 weeks after the second dose.
But the good news is that the booster dose is 75 percent effective at preventing the symptomatic infections and 88 percent effective at providing protection against hospitalizations. At the same time the Pfizer CEO said that it is not clear as to how long the booster shot will provide protection against COVID. Meanwhile, the U.K. Health Security Agency has said that the boosters are 40 to 50 percent effective against the infections ten weeks after receiving the shot.
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