Vaccination Update : People Will Likely Require A Third Dose Of The Covid-19 Vaccine

People will likely require a third shot of the COVID-19 vaccine, instead of just two, as immunity against the virus weakens. This was disclosed by the chief medical officer of BioNTech, a German biotechnology company that is the producer of the Pfizers vaccine. 

The chief medical officer, Dr. Ozlem Tureci, who is also the co-founder, reveals that people will need to get vaccinated against the coronavirus annually, just like for the seasonal flu, as the virus has come to stay. She said scientists expect that the immunity induced by the vaccine will go down over time.

In the with CNBC, she said, "We see indications for this also in the induced, but also the natural immune response against SARS-COV-2. We see this waning of immune responses also in people who were just infected and therefore [it’s] also expected with the vaccines.”

These comments are not isolated, the CEO of BioNTech/Pfizer, Albert Bourla, alluded to this in an interview on the 15th of April. He said people will require a third dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, around in about a year of full vaccination, to serve as some kind of booster shot. He also said people might need to retake shots each year.

A study involving about 500,000 people revealed the BioNTech/Pfizer coronavirus vaccine to be about 94 percent effective, 3 percent more than the company claimed it was, and the most effective of all approved vaccines. The vaccine was discovered to be most effective at preventing severe illness and death; proving to be 92% effective at preventing severe illnesses after the complete two shots and 62% after one. Two shots of the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine have been shown to cut down symptomatic cases of the Covid-19 by 94 percent (across all age groups), and a single shot is 57 percent effective in protecting against symptomatic infections on two weeks.

While researchers and health workers aren't exactly sure how long the protection against the virus will last after the six months of complete vaccination, they expect that the effectiveness/total protection will diminish over time.

So far, 24.8 percent of the entire US population have been vaccinated against the coronavirus. According to data by the Centre for Disease Control, 205,871,913 vaccine doses have been administered, with about 82,471,151 people being fully vaccinated. 39 percent of the population, about 129,494,180 people have received one dose. About 185 million of these doses were only administered after President Biden resumed office, according to CNN.

Should a third dose be required, the American government would need to put plans in place for more vaccines to be distributed.