Spanish Health Minister Carolina Darias stated on Friday that “everything indicates” the authorities will need to administer a third “booster” dose of vaccines against COVID-19 to combat the further spread of the disease in the future. Darias told Onda Cero her department is still discussing the move and when it will start distributing additional shots. She added healthcare workers will use the vaccines made by Moderna Inc., and Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE as booster doses. Darias also noted the Spaniards might need to vaccinate every year and urged them to “keep on” getting jabs until 100% of the population is inoculated, if possible. Earlier this month, the Spanish Health Ministry described the health situation in the country as “very delicate.” Meanwhile, Darias noted the number of infections from COVID-19 registered daily has been declining in the past few days. The head of Pfizer said that people will “likely” need a third dose of his company’s COVID-19 vaccine — among the priciest on the market — within a year of being fully vaccinated. CEO Albert Bourla also said annual vaccinations against the coronavirus may well be required. “We need to see what would be the sequence, and for how often we need to do that, that remains to be seen,” Bourla told CNBC in an interview recorded on April 1. “A likely scenario is that there will be likely a need for a third dose, somewhere between six and 12 months and then from there, there will be an annual revaccination, but all of that needs to be confirmed,” he said, adding that variants will play a “key role.” “It is extremely important to suppress the pool of people that can be susceptible to the virus,” he said. Researchers currently don’t know how long vaccines provide protection against the coronavirus. Researchers say more data is needed to determine whether protection lasts after six months.
David Kessler, the head of US President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 response team, warned a congressional committee on Thursday that Americans should expect to receive booster shots to defend against coronavirus variants.
“We don’t know everything at this moment,” he told the House Coronavirus Crisis Subcommittee. “We are studying the durability of the antibody response. “It seems strong but there is some waning of that and no doubt the variants challenge,” he said. “I think for planning purposes, planning purposes only, I think we should expect that we may have to boost.” The Pfizer vaccine, developed in partnership with German firm BioNTech, currently plays a leading role in American and European vaccination campaigns. The pharmaceutical giant announced in February that it was testing a third dose of its vaccine to better combat the emerging variants. The head of Pfizer said the company’s vaccine is no more expensive than the cost of a meal and will not be sold to poor countries for a profit. The head of the US-based company defended the cost of the jabs, which he said are saving lives and can help countries emerge from the pandemic. “Vaccines are very expensive,” Mr Bourla said in an interview with several media. “They save human lives, they allow economies to reopen, but we sell them at the price of a meal,” he said in the interview with Les Echos in France, Germany’s Handelsblatt, Italy’s Corriere Della Sera and El Mundo in Spain. Developed jointly with Germany-based BioNTech, the Pfizer vaccine is, along with Moderna, the vaccine that has cost the European Union the most, according to data released several months ago by a member of the Belgian government.