CEO Albert Bourla on Monday said two doses of the company’s vaccine may not provide strong protection against infection from the Covid omicron variant, and the original shots have also lost some of their efficacy at preventing hospitalization.
Bourla, in an interview at JPMorgan’s health-care conference, emphasized the importance of a third shot to boost people’s protection against omicron.
“The two doses, they’re not enough for omicron,” Bourla said. “The third dose of the current vaccine is providing quite good protection against deaths, and decent protection against hospitalizations.”
Bourla said omicron is a more difficult target than previous variants. Omicron, which has dozens of mutations, can evade some of the protection provided by Pfizer’s original two shots.
