According to Bloomberg News, Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE said that a Covid-19 booster shot of vaccine renders full protection as per a large study that has been conducted. It has been observed that the booster shot was able to restore full protection, thereby fostering the argument that a third dose can be given more widely.
It was seen that the effectiveness of the booster dose against symptomatic Covid in the study was 95.6%. People aged between 16 and more and around 10,000 in number participated in the study, the company revealed in a statement. The delta variant was predominantly used in the trial and study.
Shares of Pfizer dropped 0.7% in New York as of 10.09 am while BioNTech’s American depositary receipts rose 3.3%. Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla of Pfizer in a statement said that they believe boosters will have a crucial role to play in addressing the pandemic, which is a public health threat. The companies have also said that they would share data with the health authorities in Europe, the United States, and other places.
The regulators have been doubting as to how widely the booster doses will be made use of as the delta variant is keeping the figures growing and infection rates are still up. Brazil is one country that has been using the booster dose extensively.
Countries like the United States and the greater part of Europe have sided with the idea of administering a third dose but for individuals with high risk and the elderly.
As far as identifying the high-risk individuals and where to demarcate the line between a healthy individual and a high-risk individual is still debatable.
Half of the participants in the trial were administered the booster shot with an average follow-up period extending to two and a half months. Placebo shot was given to 109 cases randomly. The booster dose proved to be safe like the double dose vaccines that were originally given to people.
As per Bloomberg news, the results of the trial show that the booster vaccination by all possibilities could play a crucial role in sustaining the pandemic containment and with the hope of returning to normalcy earlier.
The participants in the trial received the booster shot on an average of 11 months after receiving their second dose of the original vaccine. The age group of people was an average of 53 years and a sect of the people were older than 65 years, which comprised only one-quarter of all the participants.
The efficacy of the booster shot was found to be consistent and also among individuals that had pre-existing conditions, reports Bloomberg News.
The US Food and Drug Administration stated that this week people that were older and belonged to the high-risk group and the ones that had taken Moderna Inc’s treatment could also go for the extra shot. The same applies to people that had taken one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. The agency also supported the concept of the mix-and-match boosters and said that the booster shot could be used regardless of the vaccine the recipient got for the first time.
