Ready for another shot?
Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said Thursday that the COVID-19 vaccine booster people are getting now will lose its effectiveness, and another jab will likely be recommended by the fall.
“I will be surprised when we get that data in the coming weeks that it’s holding nicely over time — I would expect that it’s not gonna hold great,” Bancel said in an interview with Goldman Sachs.
As it stands now, health officials recommend people who got the two-jab Moderna or Pfizer vaccines to get boosted after six months and those who got the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine to get boosted after two months. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now recommending boosters for children ages 12 and older. Children under the age of 5 have not received approval to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
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Bancel said he believes the elderly and people with underlying health conditions may need to get a COVID-19 booster every year. He also believes the virus is not going away and that “we’re going to have to live with it.”
Israel became the first country to begin limited distribution of the fourth dose of the COVID-19 vaccine Dec. 31. While not available for the general population, it is available to the elderly, the immunocompromised, and those who work with them.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, said on Nov. 22, 2021, that it was too early to tell if additional booster shots against COVID-19 would be required. A few weeks later, on Dec. 9, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said he believes people may need a fourth dose of the COVID-19 vaccine sooner than initially planned.
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As of Thursday evening, a total of 2,618,130 new cases of COVID-19 had been reported across the globe in the past 24 hours.
Globally, 4,567,405,833 people have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, and 3,864,889,174 people are fully vaccinated, according to the World Health Organization.
