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Fewer than 6,000 totally vaccinated People contracted Covid

Fewer than 6,000 fully vaccinated Americans contracted Covid

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky says ahead of a House Select subcommittee hearing on “Reaching the Light at the End of the Tunnel: A Science-Driven Approach to Ending the Pandemic Quickly and Safely” at the Capitol Hill in New York from Washington, DC, April 15, 2021.

Amr Alfiky | AFP | Getty Images

U.S. health officials have confirmed fewer than 6,000 cases of Covid-19 in fully vaccinated Americans, said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on Monday.

That’s only 0.007% of the 84 million Americans with full protection against the virus. Despite the groundbreaking infections, none of the patients died or became seriously ill, which suggests the vaccines are working as intended, she said.

“We expect such rare cases with any vaccine, but so far we have received reports of fewer than 6,000 breakthrough cases from more than 84 million people who have been fully vaccinated,” Walensky told reporters at a news conference. Breakthrough cases occur when someone becomes infected with the virus more than 14 days after the second shot, she said.

The CDC chief admitted the number could be underestimated.

“While that number comes from 43 states and territories and is likely underestimated, it’s still very important that these vaccines work. Of the nearly 6,000 cases, about 30% had no symptoms at all,” Walensky said.

Half of all American adults have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine. Of those over 65, 81% have received one dose or more, and around two-thirds are fully vaccinated.

US health officials are launching a massive campaign to convince more Americans to take the vaccine. An increasing number of people have become skeptical after the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration last week urged states to temporarily stop distributing Johnson & Johnson vaccines after reports of a rare but potentially fatal bleeding disorder to the CDC .

Some of former President Donald Trump’s supporters are also strongly against taking the vaccine, worrying U.S. health officials who hope enough people will be vaccinated for the country to receive herd immunity to the virus. The Chief Medical Officer of the White House, Dr. Anthony Fauci previously said 75% to 85% of the US population would need to be vaccinated to create an “umbrella” of immunity that will prevent the virus from spreading.

“It is very worrying that people are politically unwilling to be vaccinated,” Fauci said Monday on CBS This Morning. “I find this really extraordinary because they say you are encroaching on our freedoms by asking us to wear masks and doing restrictions that affect public health problems. The easiest way to overcome this is to yourself get vaccinated. ”

The US reports 723 Covid deaths per day, based on a seven-day average based on data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

At Biden’s urging, all 50 US states opened vaccination appointments for people aged 16 and over by Monday.

– CNBC’s Nate Rattner contributed to this report.

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FDA asks Emergent plant to pause manufacturing throughout probe of botched Covid vaccines

FDA asks Emergent plant to pause manufacturing during probe of botched Covid vaccines

The Emergent BioSolutions facility, a manufacturing partner for Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine, on April 9, 2021 in Baltimore, Maryland.

Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images

The Food and Drug Administration has asked Emergent BioSolutions to temporarily suspend production of materials for Covid-19 vaccines while U.S. regulators investigate their Baltimore plant, responsible for the destruction of millions of Johnson & Johnson shots, shared Emergent in a registration application filed on Monday.

The FDA initiated an inspection of the facility on April 12, asking the company to stop production four days later until the review and remediation was complete. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company also said it had quarantined all material produced at the facility.

Emergent stocks were down more than 9% on the news.

In a statement to CNBC, J&J said it would work with Emergent and the FDA “to clarify any results after the FDA inspection is complete”.

“Our goal remains to ensure that all drug substances for our COVID-19 vaccine meet our high quality standards and receive emergency use approval for drug substances manufactured in Emergent Bayview,” the company said. “At this point it is premature to speculate about the potential impact this may have on the timing of our vaccine shipments.”

Earlier this month, the Biden administration hired J&J to run the Baltimore facility after US officials learned that Emergent, a contract manufacturer that made vaccines for J&J and AstraZeneca, mixed the ingredients for the two shots would have. Officials also stopped production of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

The government’s move to let the facility manufacture only the J&J single-dose vaccine is intended to avoid future confusion, the New York Times reported, citing two senior federal health officials.

The production hiatus for new materials is the most recent setback for J & J. Last week, the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised states to temporarily “cease” use of J & J’s vaccine, after six women developed a rare but potentially life-threatening bleeding disorder in which one died and one was in critical condition.

The women developed the condition known as cerebral sinus thrombosis within about two weeks of receiving the shot, an official said. CVST is a rare form of stroke that occurs when a blood clot forms in the venous sinuses of the brain. It can eventually leak blood into the brain tissue and cause bleeding.

J.& J has privately asked Covid-19 vaccine rivals Pfizer and Moderna to participate in a study examining the risk of blood clots. The companies refused, however, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.

–Reuter contributed to this report.

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Prime Biden Covid officers to debate vaccine rollout with Home after J&J pictures paused

Top Biden Covid officials to discuss vaccine rollout with House after J&J shots paused

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases (left), speaks to Dr. David Kessler, Chief Science Officer of the White House COVID-19 Response Team on the Federal Coronavirus Response on Capitol Hill March 18, 2021 in Washington, DC.

Susan Walsh | Getty Images

The House’s coronavirus subcommittee will hear from three leading health officials in the Biden government on Thursday about United States efforts to step up vaccinations as Covid cases, including those of dangerous variants, are on the rise.

The hearing, which will also focus on the continued need for people to wear masks and follow social distancing measures, is slated to begin at 10:30 a.m. ET. It is streamed live.

The event comes two days after dozens of states abruptly stopped administering Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose Covid vaccine in response to the Food and Drug Administration’s recommendation to suspend those recordings while investigating cases of women, who have developed a rare bleeding disorder.

Some fear the recommendation, issued in response to six reported blood clot cases from nearly 7 million J&J doses administered, could hamper the global campaign to vaccinate the world against the pandemic.

The selected subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis, led by James Clyburn, DS.C., is led by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s foremost infectious disease expert, and the director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention Dr. Rochelle Walensky. David Kessler, a senior Covid official in President Joe Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services, is also on the witness list.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, listens to the response from Covid-19, DC during a hearing with the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on March 18, 2021 in Washington on Capitol Hill, DC .

Anna Moneymaker | Getty Images

While the US is vaccinating more people than ever before, Covid cases are increasing in more than half of its states. According to the Johns Hopkins University, an average of more than 71,000 cases per day were counted for the past week.

“It’s almost a race between vaccinating people and this surge that is apparently about to increase,” Fauci told CNN on Wednesday.

The emergence of variants of Covid – like B 1.1.7, which recently flooded Michigan and is now the most common strain in the US – has led health officials to urge Americans to continue to take precautionary measures despite accelerated vaccination efforts.

Experts say Johnson & Johnson’s recent vaccination problems could fuel skepticism about vaccines.

In their quest to have all eligible individuals in the U.S. vaccinated against Covid, officials have stressed that all of the options available – from Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson – are safe and effective. All three have been approved by the FDA for emergency use. Pfizer and Moderna vaccines require two separate doses given three to four weeks apart.

But the six cases of women who developed the rare blood clots urged the FDA to stop J & J’s shot “out of caution.”

All women developed the disease within about two weeks of being vaccinated, health officials told reporters Tuesday. One of the women died.

“I think it will affect the hesitation, period. Whether it should or not is a different matter,” said Dr. Jeffrey Kahn, director of the Berman Institute of Bioethics at Johns Hopkins University, told CNBC.

With Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine only containing one dose, experts say the hiatus could also reduce vaccine access for some communities.

“This vaccine was biased to be used in harsher environments, places where you couldn’t deliver two doses. You wanted to deliver one dose and stick to the vaccination schedule,” said Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who sits on the Pfizer board of directors at CNBC on Tuesday.

– The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC employee and a member of the boards of directors of Pfizer, genetic testing startup Tempus, health technology company Aetion Inc., and biotech company Illumina. He is also co-chair of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings and Royal Caribbean’s Healthy Sail Panel.

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China is beginning scientific trials of a Covid vaccine that may be inhaled

China is starting clinical trials of a Covid vaccine that can be inhaled

China’s CanSino Biologics will begin clinical trials next week for a Covid-19 vaccine administered by inhalation, the company’s co-founder and chief executive officer Xuefeng Yu told CNBC on Sunday.

The effectiveness rates for China’s Covid vaccines have been found to be lower than those developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. Earlier this month, the director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control publicly admitted that Chinese vaccines “don’t have very high protection rates” and that they are considering giving people various Covid shots to make the vaccine more effective.

Yu told CNBC that an inhaled vaccine could be more effective than the injected one because the coronavirus enters the human body through the respiratory tract.

CanSinoBIO is developing the inhalation vaccine together with the Beijing Institute of Biotechnology. The company’s injected adenovirus type 5 vector vaccine – or Ad5-nCoV – has already been approved for use in China and several other countries.

Speaking to CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal at the Boao Forum for Asia in Hainan Province, China, Yu explained that an inhaled vaccine could theoretically provide additional protection by producing antibodies or T cells – white blood cells that are vital to the immune system. activates airways in the EU.

People who received Covid-19 shots at a temporary vaccination site in Kunming, Yunnan Province, China, on April 15, 2021.

Liu Ranyang | China News Service | Getty Images

If that protective layer fails and the virus penetrates deeper into the body, other parts of the immune system could keep fighting the Covid virus, Yu added.

“So you add more layers – makes sense, doesn’t it? That’s why we’re going the mucosal path,” he said.

The CEO said the company used the same concept to develop an inhalation vaccine for tuberculosis, or TB. Studies conducted in Canada showed that the inhaled dose for the TB vaccine needed to protect it “is much, much less than the actual injection,” he said.

Increase the effectiveness of the vaccine

CanSinoBIO’s single-dose injected Covid vaccine has been approved for use in several countries including China, Pakistan, Mexico and Hungary.

The company said preliminary data from third-phase clinical trials overseas showed its vaccine was 68.83% effective at preventing symptomatic Covid-19 disease two weeks after an injection, while the rate after four weeks Fell 65.28%, Reuters reported.

By comparison, updated data showed the Pfizer BioNTech shot was 91% effective at preventing infection, while Moderna said its vaccine was more than 90% effective six months after the second shot.

According to Yu, CanSinoBIO investigated adding a booster shot six months after the first injection, which could improve the immune response to the coronavirus.

“This also suggests that our vaccine could be improved – whether mixed with others or made by ourselves, I think that really requires a scientific study. We actually need data to show which way could be better,” said the CEO.

Reuters reported Monday that Chinese researchers are testing blending Covid vaccines developed by CanSinoBIO and a unit of Chongqing Zhifei Biological Products. The process, which is ongoing in the eastern city of Nanjing, is expected to involve 120 participants, the report said.

China was the first country to report cases of Covid-19 in late 2019 and appears to have largely contained the outbreak. The country has announced that it will vaccinate 40% of its population by June.

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Half of U.S. adults have obtained no less than one Covid vaccine shot

Daily U.S. data on April 16

Dr. Jerry Abraham, director of Kedren Vaccines, right, gives Jose Guzman-Wug, 16, a COVID-19 shot while his mother, Adriana Wug, watches at Kedren Health in Los Angeles, CA on Thursday, April 15, 2021.

Allen J. Cockroaches | Los Angeles Times | Getty Images

Half of all adults in the United States have now received at least one dose of Covid-19 vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This is a major milestone in the largest vaccine campaign in the country.

More than 129 million people aged 18 and over received at least one shot, according to the CDC, representing 50.4% of the total adult population. More than 83 million adults, or 32.5% of the total adult population, are fully vaccinated with any of the three US-approved vaccines

The milestone is over 3 million people one day after the global death toll from the virus, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, with global deaths averaging 12,000 per day.

In the US, the rate of new Covid-19 cases every day remains high across the country. The country reports an average of around 68,000 new infections every day. CDC data shows that an average of 3.3 million daily doses of vaccine have been administered over the past week.

Jeff Zients, White House Covid-19 Response Coordinator, said the hiatus in Johnson & Johnson vaccinations, which came after reports of six cases of rare cerebral blood clots, would not slow the vaccination campaign as the country has enough Pfizer and Moderna vaccines disposes.

The Chief Medical Officer of the White House, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Sunday he thinks the U.S. will likely resume use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine with a warning or restriction, and expects a decision to be made once the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel meets on Friday to discuss the resumption.

“I guess we will continue to use it in some form,” Fauci said during an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press. “I very seriously doubt they’ll just cancel it. I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

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U.S. will seemingly resume use of J&J Covid vaccine with a warning

U.S. will likely resume use of J&J Covid vaccine with a warning

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases, testifies on April 15, 2021 at the House Select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis on Capitol Hill in Washington.

Susan Walsh | Pool | Reuters

The Chief Medical Officer of the White House, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Sunday he believes the US is likely to resume use of the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine with a warning or restriction.

Health officials on Tuesday urged states to temporarily suspend the single dose of J&J after six cases of rare brain blood clots were reported in women of approximately 7 million people who received the vaccine in the United States

The cases occurred in women ages 18 to 48 who developed symptoms six to 13 days after receiving the shot. The Food and Drug Administration said the recommendation to stop the vaccine was “out of caution”.

Fauci said he expected a decision on the J&J vaccine as early as Friday when the vaccine advisory panel of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention meets to discuss reopening.

“I guess we will continue to use it in some form,” Fauci said during an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press. “I very seriously doubt they’ll just cancel it. I don’t think that’s going to happen. I think there will likely be some kind of warning or restriction or risk assessment.”

“I don’t think it will just go back and say, ‘Okay, everything is fine. Go right back.’ I think it will likely say, “Okay, we’re going to use it, but be careful in these certain circumstances,” Fauci continued.

About 5% of vaccine supplies in the US are lost due to the pause in J&J admission. It is unclear how the hiatus will affect the company’s goal of delivering 100 million cans nationwide by the end of May.

White House Tsar Jeff Zients said the stop would have no material impact on the U.S. vaccination program, which is handing out enough Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to continue the current pace of around 3 million shots a day.

The country reports an average of 3.3 million daily vaccine doses given in the past week, and 3 million if only Pfizer and Moderna are counted. According to CDC data, only around 7.8 million of the total of 202 million recordings in the US are from J&J

“You don’t want to jump in front of yourself and decide that you know the full spectrum. This is one of the reasons they paused and hopefully we’ll know by Friday,” Fauci said during an interview on CBS. “Face the nation.”

– CNBC’s Nate Rattner contributed to the coverage

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Merck ends growth of Covid drug it acquired from OncoImmune

Merck ends development of Covid drug it acquired from OncoImmune

Merck announced Thursday that it would end development of its experimental drug for hospitalized patients with severe Covid-19 after the Food and Drug Administration asked the company to provide additional data to support an emergency clearance.

New Jersey-based Merck acquired the drug MK-7110 through the acquisition of privately held biopharmaceutical company OncoImmune late last year for $ 425 million.

An interim analysis of clinical trial data found the drug improved the chances of recovery for the sickest patients with Covid-19 and decreased the risk of death or respiratory failure.

In February, however, Merck announced that US regulators had requested more data on the drug beyond the phase 3 study that had already been conducted. At that point, the company no longer expected to supply the US with the drug in the first half of 2021.

Due to “regulatory uncertainties” and the time and resources required to provide the additional data, Merck has decided to discontinue development of the drug and instead focus on advancing its other Covid-19 drug and accelerating it focus on the production of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

“Because of the additional research that would be required – new clinical trials as well as research related to large-scale manufacturing – MK-7110 is not expected to be available until the first half of 2022,” a press release said Company.

The announcement is yet another disappointment for Merck in its efforts to combat the pandemic.

In January, she announced that she would stop developing her two Covid-19 vaccines. In early studies, both vaccines produced immune responses that were worse than those seen in people who had recovered from Covid-19, as well as those reported for other vaccines, the company said.

As Merck withdraws from MK-7110, the company will continue developing its oral antiviral drug molnupiravir in a phase three clinical trial in out-of-hospital patients with Covid-19.

“We continue to make progress in the clinical development of our antiviral candidate molnupiravir,” said Roy Baynes, Merck’s chief medical officer, in a press release. “Dose-finding data from these studies are consistent with the mechanism of action and provide strong evidence for the antiviral potential of the 800 mg dose.”

–Reuter contributed to this report.

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Why U.S. will not eradicate Covid like smallpox, polio

Why U.S. won't eradicate Covid like smallpox, polio

Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC on Friday that the US is unlikely to eradicate Covid as it would with other diseases like polio and smallpox unless Americans change their attitudes about vaccination significantly.

“It is possible. We do not seem ready to do this and take the collective action that is required,” said the former head of the Food and Drug Administration on Squawk Box.

“It will take people who practice a serious virtue to get vaccinated, even if they feel they have a low risk of infection because even if they have a low personal risk they can receive and transmit the infection, and you cannot exterminate them. ” A disease that has a significant contingent of people who continue to catch and transmit it, “he said.

No cases of polio have occurred in the United States since 1979, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The first vaccine against the disease, which can cause paralysis, was offered in the country in 1955.

According to the CDC, it has been more than 70 years since the last naturally occurring smallpox outbreak was recorded in the United States. After years of global public health campaigns that included mass vaccination, the World Health Organization’s governing body declared smallpox eradication in 1980.

According to the CDC, routine vaccinations are no longer required for smallpox. However, the agency continues to recommend that children of different ages receive four doses of polio vaccine.

“We are eliminating things where we have very high vaccination rates and where the vaccine is a one-time vaccine that will provide complete protection for a long time and for a lifetime,” said Gottlieb, who sits on Pfizer’s board of directors One of the three Covid vaccines approved for use in the United States in an emergency. Moderna makes the other two-shot vaccine. Johnson & Johnson’s one-dose vaccine has been suspended by the FDA due to rare but serious blood clotting problems.

“You see measles, smallpox, polio, we vaccinate children. It gives them a level of protection that lasts long-term or into adulthood, and so we can eradicate or largely eradicate these diseases in societies in which we live. Vaccination levels that are very.” are high, “said Gottlieb. For Covid, this is unlikely to be the case in the United States, he said. In addition, a “sufficiently large” proportion of the adult population oppose the Covid vaccination and the shots are not yet available to young children, he said.

“If it becomes available to children, there is now a very healthy debate in this country about whether it is mandatory for children to go back to school and it appears that the answer will be ‘no’ in the vast majority of states will. “said Gottlieb. “That doesn’t create the conditions to eradicate this virus. It creates a setup in which we can bring this virus to a low level. But you will still have pockets of spread. If we want to eradicate it, we need it.” make different decisions as a society. “

However, many colleges and universities in the US require Covid vaccines for students returning for the fall semester.

Gottlieb’s remarks came Friday, the day after the comments were published by Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, who said it was “likely” that people will need a third dose of Covid vaccine within a year of being fully vaccinated.

The remarks renewed the conversation about the duration of the threat from the coronavirus, which the World Health Organization declared a pandemic 13 months ago.

In the US, around 24% of the population are fully vaccinated against Covid, according to the CDC. President Joe Biden has asked states to ensure that all adults are eligible to receive the shot within the next few days.

Even if millions of Americans are still being vaccinated, coronavirus cases in the United States are still on the rise. According to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, the 7-day average of new infections a day was 70,484, up 7% over the past week. That is a long way from their all-time highs earlier this year, but it is in line with the levels seen during the summer surge.

Some people, including Bourla, have suggested that coronavirus vaccinations could become an annual event, similar to seasonal influenza. In the near future, Gottlieb said he expected this to be true.

“It is difficult to predict what things will be like in seven years, ten years from now with Covid and how much this infection will be socially reduced, but at least for the foreseeable future you could see this an annual … vaccination,” he said .

More than 31 million coronavirus cases have been recorded in the United States since the pandemic began, and at least 565,293 people in the country have died from the disease, according to Johns Hopkins data. Both cumulative cases and deaths in the United States, the highest of any nation in the world, account for about 20% of the global total.

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Can Covid Analysis Assist Resolve the Mysteries of Different Viruses?

Can Covid Research Help Solve the Mysteries of Other Viruses?

However, symptoms such as fatigue are often not recognized as being associated with myocarditis. And Dr. McManus suspects that the fatigue that sometimes follows a battle with Covid-19 could be caused by this heart problem.

“We view Covid-19 and influenza as respiratory diseases, and indeed they are,” said Dr. Bruce M. McManus, Professor Emeritus of Pathology at the University of British Columbia. “But the reason many patients die in many cases is because of the myocardium.”

Some seriously ill Covid patients have lung damage. That can also happen with other viruses, said Dr. Clemente Britto-Leon, lung researcher at the Yale School of Medicine. He lists a few possibilities.

“You can have lung injuries and scars with influenza, herpes viruses, and cytomegalovirus infections,” said Dr. Britto and was referring to a common virus that usually doesn’t cause symptoms. All of these viruses can, on rare occasions, cause harm, he said. “You can have a very serious injury and a lot of tissue damage.”

Influenza can cause blood clots in the lining of the lungs that look just like the small blood clots in the lungs of some Covid patients, said Marco Goeijenbier of Erasmus University in the Netherlands. It happens when flu viruses infect the lower respiratory tract, an unusual occurrence since most people already have protective immunity.

Dr. Goeijenbier wants to examine the blood clots that occur in these cases. So far, he and others have reproduced and examined the effects in so few patients in laboratory studies and in ferrets – the animals of choice for studying the flu.

“It was hard to get money,” he said. “Big magazines or funders didn’t find it interesting enough,” he said.

Covid changes that.

There is now “a huge cohort of people to study,” said Pamela Dalton, a olfactory researcher at Monell. But “the big question is, even if you learn all about SARS-CoV-2” – the formal name of the coronavirus – “how generalizable is it?”

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Pfizer CEO says third Covid vaccine dose doubtless wanted inside 12 months

Pfizer CEO says third Covid vaccine dose likely needed within 12 months

President Joe Biden listens as Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla speaks at the Pfizer Kalamazoo manufacturing facility in Portage, Michigan on February 19, 2021.

Brendan Smialowski | AFP | Getty Images

Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer, said people “likely” will need a booster dose of a Covid-19 vaccine within 12 months of being fully vaccinated. His comments were posted on Thursday but recorded on April 1st.

Bourla said it was possible that people would need to be vaccinated against the coronavirus annually.

“A likely scenario is that a third dose is likely to be needed, somewhere between six and twelve months, and there will be an annual revaccination from there, but all of this needs to be confirmed. And again the variants will play a key role,” said he Bertha Coombs of CNBC during an event with CVS Health.

“It is extremely important to suppress the pool of people who may be susceptible to the virus,” Bourla said.

The comment comes after Johnson & Johnson CEO Alex Gorsky told CNBC in February that people may need to be vaccinated against Covid-19 annually, just like seasonal flu shots.

Researchers still don’t know how long protection against the virus will last once someone has been fully vaccinated.

Pfizer said earlier this month that up to six months after the second dose, its Covid-19 vaccine was more than 91% effective against the coronavirus and more than 95% effective against serious illnesses. Moderna’s vaccine, which uses technology similar to Pfizer, was also shown to be highly effective after six months.

Pfizer’s data was based on more than 12,000 vaccinated participants. However, researchers say more data is needed to determine if protection continues after six months.

David Kessler, the Biden government’s chief science officer for Covid Response, said earlier Thursday that Americans should expect booster vaccinations to protect against coronavirus variants.

Kessler told US lawmakers that currently approved vaccines offer high levels of protection, but that new variants may “question” the effectiveness of the shots.

“We don’t know everything right now,” he told the House Select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis.

“We are investigating the durability of the antibody response,” he said. “It seems strong, but it’s wearing off a bit and no doubt the variants are challenging … they make these vaccines work harder. So I think we should, for planning purposes, for planning purposes only, expect us to possibly need to increase. “”

In February, Pfizer and BioNTech announced that they were testing a third dose of their Covid-19 vaccine to better understand the immune response against new variants of the virus.

At the end of last month, the National Institutes of Health began testing a new Covid vaccine from Moderna, in addition to the existing one, which is intended to protect against a problematic variant first found in South Africa.

Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel told CNBC on Wednesday that the company is hoping to have a booster shot for its two-dose vaccine in the fall.