Jordan News

Pfizer announced, on Wednesday, that people around the world may need a fourth dose of the vaccine to confront the African mutant of the Corona virus (Omicron).

And Pfizer CEO Albert Borla said that people may need to receive a fourth dose of the Corona vaccine sooner than expected, due to the outbreak of the new Omicron mutant.

Borla told CNBC that preliminary research shows that the new variant of Omicron can undermine the protective antibodies produced by the vaccine developed with Biotech.

These comments come after the company released the results of a preliminary laboratory study, Wednesday, that showed that a three-dose course of the Covid-19 vaccine can significantly protect against the new Omicron mutant and said that it could provide a developed vaccine in March 2022, if necessary.

Borla stressed the need to receive doses during the winter, as people spend more time indoors in unventilated places, saying that “the third dose will provide very good protection.”

The CEO of Pfizer added that the company’s antiviral vaccine, Paxlovid, would also help prevent hospitalization.

And last November, Pfizer submitted its application for emergency permission to approve the pills, which Borla said he expects to show an 89 percent improvement in hospitalization and deaths.

Borla also noted that he expects new variants to continue to emerge in the future and that the company is watching to see if vaccine modifications are necessary.

At a time when countries are racing to publish boosters for the Corona vaccine, an advisory group affiliated with the World Health Organization decided, yesterday, Thursday, not to approve the widespread adoption of booster doses.

The Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) considered that poor countries are subject to inequality in vaccines and that providing the first dose should be the priority.

The World Health Organization has supported the idea of ​​allocating third vaccines or booster doses to those who are immunocompromised, but WHO experts said that there is insufficient data on the Ommicron variable to prove the efficacy and necessity of booster doses.

“Some features of Omicron, including its global spread and large number of mutations, indicate that it can have a significant impact on the course of the epidemic,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a press statement.