Pfizer-BioNTech booster shot restores full Covid protection

A booster was 95.6% effective against symptomatic Covid in the study that followed 10,000 people aged 16 and over, the companies said in a statement on Thursday. The rapidly expanding delta variant was the major strain during testing.

Shares of Pfizer were up 0.7% in premarket US trading, while BioNTech was up 1.8% in Frankfurt.

“We believe boosters have an important role to play in addressing the ongoing public health threat of this pandemic,” Pfizer Chief Executive Officer Albert Boerla said in a statement. The companies said they would share the data with health officials in the US, Europe. and elsewhere.

Regulators have wrestled about how widely to use the booster as the delta version increases infection rates. Some countries, such as Israel, are using boosters extensively. Many others – including the US and Europe – have so far swung in favor of a third dose for the elderly and other high-risk individuals. Where to draw the line on a high-risk individual has also been a matter of debate.

Half of the trial participants received a booster, with five cases in that group over an average follow-up period of two and a half months. 109 cases in the group were randomly assigned a placebo shot. The booster was as safe as the original two-dose vaccine.

The trial results suggest that “booster vaccination can play an important role in epidemic prevention and return to normalcy,” said BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin.

Trial participants received a booster an average of 11 months after their second dose of vaccine. They were 53 years old on average, a little less than a quarter of the age group over 65. The effectiveness of the third shot was consistent among age groups and people with pre-existing conditions, the companies said.

The US Food and Drug Administration said this week that older or high-risk people who received treatment from Moderna Inc. could also get an additional shot, as could all adults who took a single dose of Johnson & Johnson. Was. The agency backed the mix-and-match booster, saying that each of the available Covid shots can be used, no matter which vaccine the recipient receives in the first place.