‘Normal Life’ Won’t Return Without Pfizer’s Annual COVID-19 Vaccine Boosters, CEO Bourla Says
00:01 GMT 29.09.2021 (Updated: 00:18 GMT 29.09.2021)
© AP Photo / Christophe Ena
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The Biden administration has bought 500 million Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines to donate to poorer nations. However, it’s diplomacy, not charity, that’s motivated the White House, which said it intends to show "democracies are the countries that can best deliver solutions for people everywhere." China has promised to export 2 billion shots this year.
Speaking to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos earlier this week, Albert Bourla, the CEO of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, said “normal life” could return in a year’s time, but only with COVID-19 vaccines like those his company sells.
“Within a year, I think we will be able to come back to normal life,” Bourla said in a Sunday interview.
Noting that new variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, are likely to continue emerging, the Pfizer CEO added that “I don't think that this means that we should be able to live our lives without having immune - without having vaccinations, basically. But that's - again, remains to be seen.”
“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. And, also, we will have vaccines that, they will last at least a year,” Bourla said. “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.”
An endemic COVID-19 requiring regular treatments provided by the for-profit firm has long been seen as the key to Pfizer’s future financial success. Bourla described the situation to investors as “durable demand,” noting several governments had already signed multi-year supply contracts.
“It is our hope that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine will continue to have a global impact by helping to get the devastating pandemic under control and helping economies around the world not only open – but stay open – creating a scenario in which Pfizer can continue to be both a leader and a beneficiary,” Bourla said in a first quarter earnings statement in May.
Further, in February Pfizer CFO Frank D’Amelio boasted that this shift, which would coincide with individuals becoming the primary vaccine buyers instead of government mass purchase contracts, would allow a price increase of almost 900%, from $19.50 per dose to $175 per dose.
A second-quarter earnings report published in late July noted that in the first six months of 2021, COVID-19 vaccines accounted for 42% of Pfizer's revenue.
Boosters and Child Vaccines
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently approved a third booster shot of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine to be given to elderly people and other at-risk groups about six months after their second dose as a way to fortify their immune systems against the powerful Delta variant of the virus, which can “break through” vaccine immunities in some cases. However, just days earlier, the FDA had rejected Pfizer’s bid, saying it lacked sufficient safety data and that the vaccine’s efficacy declined significantly after just a few months.
U.S. President Joe Biden removes his face mask to speak while being introduced by Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla during a tours of a Pfizer manufacturing plant producing the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine in Kalamazoo, Michigan, U.S., February 19, 2021
© REUTERS / Tom Brenner
Bourla said “it is a question of days, not weeks” as to when the FDA will approve vaccinations of children between 5 and 11 years of age. Their inability to be vaccinated by the existing shots has helped turn schools into vectors for COVID-19 spread, and the Delta variant has hospitalized record numbers of children. He noted the dose for children is one-third the dose used for teenagers and adults.
According to data collected by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), just over 55% of the US population, or 183.8 million people, have received both vaccine shots. However, the pace of vaccination has slowed from the spring’s mass vaccine rollout, with just two days since June seeing more than 1 million shots per day, and the seven-day moving average as of September 22 being 594,000 shots per day. Worldwide, it paradoxically ranks at 42nd most vaccinated.
‘We Have Done So Much Good to Humanity’
As Sputnik has reported, Pfizer has been among the most vocal opponents of a movement led by the world’s poorer nations to convince the World Trade Organization to waive its stiff intellectual property laws, which prohibit cheaper generic versions of drugs from being made in the Third World. The company has strong-armed nations into putting up significant collateral in order to buy their shots, including even state assets like embassies and military bases.
IP laws have forced most of the world’s nations to buy their vaccines from a handful of pharmaceutical corporations or wait for donated vaccines via the World Health Organization’s COVAX program to arrive, helping to contribute to a situation in which 75% of shots have been given in just 10 countries, and the continent of Africa has gotten barely 2% of them.
Recently, Tom Friedan, a former head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, blasted Pfizer and Moderna, another pharmaceutical company and maker of COVID-19 vaccines, for “doing next to nothing to close the global gap in vaccine supply.”
While focusing on selling expensive vaccines to rich countries, Moderna and Pfizer are doing next to nothing to close the global gap in vaccine supply. Shameful.
— Dr. Tom Frieden (@DrTomFrieden) September 21, 2021
Bourla defended Pfizer’s role in the world, telling Stephanopoulos that “there is no other company that can claim that we have done so much good to humanity as we have done.”
“I think the intellectual property is what created the thriving life sciences sector that was ready when the pandemic hit. Without that, we wouldn't be here to discuss if we need the boosters or not, because we wouldn't have vaccines,” the Pfizer CEO said on Sunday. “And, also, we are very proud of what we have done. I don't know why he's using these words. We are very proud. We have saved millions of lives with the vaccine.”
