A third dose of Pfizer vaccine, 6 to 12 months after the second injection, provides up to 10 times more antibodies

The pharmaceutical giant Pfizer with his German partner BioNTech they have just published the first data of a preliminary study on the application of a third dose booster for your COVID-19 vaccine, which originally included two injections spaced apart every 3 weeks O 21 days. As announced by the company, the third component administered approximately six months after the second dose showed that the observed neutralization titers are five to ten times higher than those recorded with the two original inoculants.

The companies, which make the inoculant based on messenger RNA technology, have anticipated that expect “more definitive” data to be released soon for submission to the US Food and Drug Administration, FDA.

As Pfizer thinks, real-world evidence in Israel showed a decrease in efficacy achieved about six months after people were fully vaccinated. This raised the need to investigate possible booster dose strategies.

In a press release, they warned: “While protection against critical illness has remained high for the full six months, the observed decrease in efficacy against asymptomatic COVID-19 over time and the continued emergence of variants are key factors leading us to believe that a third booster dose will likely be required to maintain the lowest levels of protection. higher”.

same The companies are working on materials with a plan to approve a new vaccine build platform, intended for the Delta variant, to start new clinical trials in August..

From the company, they insisted: “While we believe that a third dose of BNT162b2 – the technical name for Pfizer’s vaccine – has the potential to preserve the highest levels of protective efficacy against all currently known variants, including Delta, we remain vigilant and are developing a updated version of the Pfizer-COVID- 19 vaccine which uses a new platform based on the B.1.617.2 lineage, first identified in India and also known as the Delta variant ”.

“The companies are already producing clinical trial material and plan to begin clinical studies in August, subject to regulatory approvals,” Pfizer and BioNTech said in the release.

For its part, Modern, the other inoculant which uses RNA technology and together with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine form the triad of vaccines approved in the United States, have made statements along the same lines as Pfizer in recent days about the need for booster shots for their COVID-19 inoculant, which has two doses, every 4 weeks or so. 28 days; while J & J’s is a single dose, that is, it only requires one application.

In May, Stephane Bancel, CEO of Moderna, warned: “Booster injections will be needed as we believe the virus will not go away,” working with investors.

Laboratories will need to conduct more studies for the FDA and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to decide on the third dose and determine if they will allow the aforementioned booster to be incorporated into the regimens, and well sure, explain how and when to apply them in each case.

Consulted by ABC, the doctor Dan Barouch, director of virology and vaccine research at Beth Israel Medical Center, said, “Obviously, pharmaceutical companies have a financial incentive, especially those that have for-profit vaccines, so we want the final decision for a third dose to be made solely on the basis of public health and not on financial incentives from companies”.

Pfizer plans to ask U.S. regulators to authorize a booster dose of its COVID-19 vaccine within the next month., based on the evidence of a higher risk of re-infection six months after inoculation and before the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant.

The scientific director of the pharmaceutical company, Mikaël Dolsten, he said that the recently reported decline in vaccine effectiveness in Israel was mainly due to infections in people who had been vaccinated in January or February. Israel’s health ministry said the vaccine’s effectiveness in preventing infections and symptomatic illnesses fell to 64% in June.

“The Pfizer vaccine is very active against the Delta variant“Dolsten said in an interview. But after six months, he pointed out,”the risk of reinfection is likely because the antibodies, as expected, decrease”.

From Pfizer, they pointed out that data from Israel and Britain suggests that even with declining antibody levels, the vaccine is still about 95% effective against severe disease.

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