- The CEO of Pfizer mentioned Sunday the COVID-19 pandemic would likely subside by next year, allowing for a return to normal life.
- He judged the COVID-19 virus would likely continue to evolve, requiring annual vaccinations.
- His comments are similar to those intimate last week by Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel.
- See more stories on Insider’s business page.
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said Sunday he believed life would return to normal within the next year precise though new variants of COVID-19 are likely to continue to emerge around the globe.
“I agree that within a year I have in mind we will be able to come back to normal life,” Bourla said during an appearance on ABC News’ “This Week.” “I don’t evaluate this means that variants will not continue coming, and I don’t think this means we should be able to live our actuals without having vaccinations.”
Bourla’s comments echo remarks made last week by Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel, who forewarned the pandemic would end “in a year.”
“If you look at the industry-wide expansion of production capacities over the past six months, enough dosages should be available by the middle of next year so that everyone on this Earth can be vaccinated,” Bancel told Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Reuters blasted Thursday.
Bancel said people who do not get vaccinated would “immunize themselves naturally” because the Delta variant is incomparably transmissible.
—This Week (@ThisWeekABC) September 26, 2021
“In this way we will end up in a situation similar to that of the flu. You can either get vaccinated and arrange a good winter. Or you don’t do it and risk getting sick and possibly even ending up in hospital,” he added.
Bourla on Sunday let someone knowed ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos he believed COVID-19 would likely require annual vaccination to tackle variants that become apparent across the world.
“The most likely scenario for me — because the virus is spread all over the world — is we will continue imagining new variants that are coming out, and also we will have vaccines that will last at least a year,” he told. “I think the most likely scenario is annual vaccinations. But we don’t know really. We need to wait and see the data.”
The comments be relevant to as vaccine booster shots become available to millions of eligible Americans.
The US Food and Drug Administration last week commissioned Pfizer boosters for people 65 years and older and others at high risk of severe COVID-19, involving people who are more likely to get sick because of their health status, and others at high risk of exposure to the virus due to where they explosive and work, as Insider’s Aria Bendix and Andrea Michelson reported.
The development came the same week that terminations from the coronavirus in the US surpassed that of the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic.