Daily Management Review

Normal Life To Return In A Year But With Annual Covid Shots, Says Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla


09/27/2021




Normal Life To Return In A Year But With Annual Covid Shots, Says Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla
According to Pfizer CEO and Chairman Albert Bourla, normal life in the world should return back within a year. He also said that people would likely also need to take Covid-19 vaccination shots every year.
 
“Within a year I think we will be able to come back to normal life,” Bourla said in an interview on ABC’s “This Week.”
 
Bourla however also pointed out that getting back to normal life will have its caveats.
 
“I don’t think that this means that the variants will not continue coming, and I don’t think that this means that we should be able to live our lives without having vaccinations,” Bourla said.
 
“But that, again, remains to be seen,” he added.
 
In a similar vein, Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel had also made a prediction of life returning to normal in about a year’s time.
 
“As of today, in a year, I assume,” Bancel told the Swiss newspaper Neue Zuercher Zeitung. He was answering a question on his view of when life would return to normal.
 
It is likely that people will require annual coronavirus vaccine shots in order to continue to have normal lives, suggested Pfizer’s Bourla.
 
“The most likely scenario for me is that, because the virus is spread all over the world, that it will continue seeing new variants that are coming out,” Bourla said. “Also we will have vaccines that they will last at least a year, and I think the most likely scenario is annual vaccination, but we don’t know really, we need to wait and see the data.”
 
Authorization of the distribution of Pfizer and BioNTech’s Covid-19 booster shots was au8thoritsed last week by Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the head of the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (DCD). The booster shots were however applicable for people in high-risk occupational and institutional settings. The move was effectively a deviation from the suggestions of an advisory panel.
 
Walensky did, however, allow booster doses for older Americans and individuals with underlying medical problems to be administered at least six months after their initial round of shots, in accordance with the advisory panel's recommendations.
 
A widespread rollout of booster shots has been strongly opposed by the World Health Organization, arguing the extra doses to countries with minimal vaccination rates should be given the extra doses by wealthier countries.
 
It is “not right to decide if you’re going to approve or not boosters” on any other criteria than “if the boosters are needed,” Bourla said on Sunday.
 
There was criticism of Moderna and Pfizer by Tom Frieden, former head of the CDC, last week for the companies not sharing vaccination intellectual property in a broad manner so that the global vaccination rates could be accelerated.
 
“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,” Frieden said tweeted on Twitter.
 
It is not a good idea to wave intellectual property, Bourla said.
 
“Intellectual property is what created the thriving life sciences sector that was ready when the pandemic hit,” Bourla said. “Without that, we wouldn’t be here to discuss if we didn’t with us or not because we wouldn’t have vaccines ... Also, we are very proud of what we have done. I don’t know why [Frieden] is using these words. We are very proud. We have saved millions of lives.”
 
(Source:www.cnbc.com)