The CEO of the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer says he believes life will return to normal “within a year” – but his vision of ‘normal’ involves “annual re-vaccinations” against Covid. MailOnline has the story.
“Finally, Moderna’s CEO said this week that the pandemic is on course to be over in about a year. Do you agree with that?” ABC This Week host George Stephanapoulos asked [Albert] Bourla on Sunday.
“I agree that, within a year, I think we will be able to come back to normal life,” he concurred.
“I don’t think that this means that variants will not be continuing coming,” Bourla countered. “And I don’t think that this means that we should be able to live our lives without having vaccinations, basically. But that’s – again, remains to be seen.”
He said that the most likely outcome is that people will need to continue to get Covid booster vaccines annually, similar to how people get the flu shot each year to protect against the most likely variant of the influenza virus that year.
“The most likely scenario for me, it is that, because the virus is spread all over the world, that we will continue seeing new variants that are coming out,” he said. “And, also, we will have vaccines that – they will last at least a year.”
“And I think the most likely scenario – it is annual re-vaccinations. But we don’t know, really. We need to wait and see the data,” the pharmaceutical company chief added.
Pfizer is the only company of the three who were approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for Covid vaccines in the U.S. that has also been approved for a booster.
Read More: Pfizer CEO Hints at Annual Covid Vaccine Booster Roll-Outs
