Pfizer Vaccine Booster Restores Nearly Full Protection, Company Says

THURSDAY, Oct. 21, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine booster restored close to full protection against COVID-19 in a late-stage trial involving 10,000 people, the company announced Thursday.

They said the booster was 95.6% effective and that they plan to submit the latest data to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and regulators in other nations.

"These results provide further evidence of the benefits of boosters as we aim to keep people well-protected against this disease," Pfizer chairman and CEO Albert Bourla said in a statement.

"In addition to our efforts to increase global access and uptake among the unvaccinated, we believe boosters have a critical role to play in addressing the ongoing public health threat of this pandemic. We look forward to sharing these data with health authorities and working together to determine how they can be used to support the rollout of booster doses around the world," Bourla added.

The trial of volunteers aged 16 and older is the first randomized, controlled COVID-19 vaccine booster study to provide efficacy results, CBS News reported.

"These important data add to the body of evidence suggesting that a booster dose of our vaccine can help protect a broad population of people from this virus and its variants," Dr. Ugur Sahin, CEO and co-founder of BioNTech, said in the statement.

The findings suggest that "booster vaccinations could play an important role in sustaining pandemic containment and a return to normalcy," Sahin added.

On Wednesday, the FDA granted emergency use authorization to COVID-19 vaccine booster shots from Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, CBS News reported. The agency also backed the mixing and matching of vaccine and booster shots.

Last month, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention endorsed Pfizer's booster shot for seniors older than 65, nursing home residents, and adults 50 and older with "underlying medical conditions" or jobs that raise their risk of COVID-19 exposure.

More information

Visit the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for more on COVID vaccines.

SOURCES: CBS News; Pfizer and BioNTech, statement, Oct. 21, 2021