Stephane Bancel, the CEO of Moderna, claimed that people may need to be injected with a second COVID-19 booster shot in several months to keep up protection to COVID-19.
Bancel’s comments, made Thursday at a healthcare conference organized by Goldman Sachs, echo similar statements made by Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla last month. Both heads of major pharmaceutical companies cited the spread of the Omicron variant in justifying their predictions.
“I will be surprised when we get that data in the coming weeks that it’s holding nicely over time — I would expect that it’s not going to hold great,” Bancel said, referring to the protection against COVID-19 awarded by the vaccine, according to CNBC.
“I still believe we’re going to need boosters in the fall of ’22 and forward,” he continued. He said more vulnerable populations, such as those who are older or have comorbidities, may need annual boosters for years.
“We have been saying that we believe first this virus is not going away,” Bancel said. “We’re going to have to live with it.”
About a month ago, Bourla made a similar prediction. “When we see real-world data, will determine if the omicron is well covered by the third dose and for how long. And the second point, I think we will need a fourth dose,” Bourla said during an appearance on CNBC.
Earlier this week, the federal government appeared to endorse the belief that vaccinated people should take booster shots to maintain the durability of their COVID-19 immunity, though some medical experts were quick to accuse the government of manipulating its message to push people into getting a booster shot regardless of risk factors. As The Daily Wire reported:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) began this week advising people to keep their COVID-19 vaccination “up to date,” a change from the CDC’s former recommendation that people be “fully vaccinated” with either two shots of Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna’s vaccines or one shot of Johnson & Johnson’s.
The “up-to-date” standard is open to containing one or more booster shots on top of the initial vaccination. …
“Well CDC just did it, as I predicted. They changed their language from ‘Get a booster’ to ‘Are you up to date?’ This manipulation [of] words implies that low-risk people without a booster are out-of-date. Also sets the stage for [frequent] boosters,” tweeted Dr. Marty Makary of Johns Hopkins University. “Covid vaccinations are not software.”
Dr. Nicole Saphier, director of breast imaging at Memorial Sloan Kettering in Monmouth, New Jersey, stated: “The CDC changing verbiage from ‘fully vaccinated’ to ‘up to date’ is a manipulation of words to influence behavior while failing to admit immunity/protection are not binary. There will be consequences of heedless measures using selective data. It’s upsetting to witness.”
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