In a statement released on Sunday, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla stated that a fourth dose of the COVID-19 vaccine will be required to help keep hospitalizations manageable and illnesses more moderate in the future. It is anticipated that the company would submit data to the Food and Drug Administration for a fourth Covid shot in the near future.
The fourth dose of the COVID-19 vaccine is necessary, Bourla claims
Bourla said that the fourth dose of vaccine is necessary for anyone to keep them from hospitalizations and death.
“It’s not that good against infections but doesn’t last very long. But we are just submitting those data to the FDA (Food and Drug Administration), and then we will see what the experts also will say outside Pfizer,” added Bourla, as quoted by MSN.
The fourth dose COVID-19 has already been recommended for high-risk groups in a number of countries, including Israel, Chile, and Germany. As he did in his interview on Sunday, Bourla reaffirmed his company’s commitment to developing a vaccine that will be effective against all variations of COVID-19 over a longer length of time.
The fourth dose offers a slightly boost against Omicron
The researchers tested 25 people’s neutralizing antibodies against multiple SARS-CoV-2 subtypes. Participants’ antibodies could inhibit Omicron from infecting cells after the third vaccine dose, but not as successfully as the Delta variant.
As reported by Nature, after the fourth dose, the antibodies’ efficacy against Omicron increased, although not by much. These antibody results may explain why the fourth dose provided no additional protection against Omicron infection. A four-dose Pfizer vaccination was 30% more effective than a three-dose Moderna vaccine in preventing infection.
As a result, by the end of January, 52 participants who had received the fourth dosage of COVID-19 vaccine and 73 of the matched controls who had received only three doses had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 by comparison. No one in either the control or four-dose groups got severe COVID-19, despite the fact that the majority of the individuals had mild to moderate infections.
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