Pfizer to test third dose to protect against covid variants

New York, Feb 25 (EFE) .- The pharmaceutical company Pfizer announced this Thursday that it will study the possibility of injecting a third dose to vaccinated people to try to reinforce protection against the most aggressive variants of the coronavirus.
The executive director of the pharmaceutical company, Albert Bourla, assured the NBC channel that with this third dose the antibody response could be strengthened between 10 and 20 times.
This new study will target two age groups, people between 65 and 85 years old and those between 18 and 55 and will be chosen from the group that already participated in the first trials carried out by the pharmaceutical company Pfizer in cooperation with BioNTech.
The company’s tests began in May 2020 and consisted of the application of two injections three weeks apart.
The third dose will be injected coinciding with the first anniversary of the first dose, that is, next May.
This trial adds to the tests that the company has started with a modified version of its vaccine, intended against the South African variant.
Bourla told the channel that just as people are vaccinated annually against the flu, they will have to do it against covid-19.
“Every year, you will have to go and get your dose to be protected against covid,” he said.
According to a report published on February 18 in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), Pfizer’s vaccine against covid-19 produces a weakened reaction to the South African variant of the coronavirus, known as B.1.351, but it still seems enough to neutralize the virus.
However, the research team at the University of Texas School of Medicine at Galveston, which conducted the study, cautioned that the study has limitations, including a “lack of systematic examination of individual mutations and the potential for mutations to alter the neutralizing effect. “

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