The World Health Organization is calling for vaccine manufacturers to future proof Covid jabs instead of focusing on rolling out regular boosters.
The agency's Technical Advisory Group on COVID-19 Vaccine Composition (TAG-CO-VAC) released a report this week saying that planning to regularly roll out Covid boosters is not sustainable.
It places the WHO are direct opposition to Pfizer, whose CEO Albert Bourla said earlier this week said that Covid could be around for a next decade, but will be controlled by regular booster shots produced by the company.
Pfizer is the leading vaccine manufacturer for the U.S., and many countries around the world. The company has raked in millions of dollars from vaccine purchase contracts since the jabs first became available in December 2020.
The continued use of booster shots to control Covid could prove to be necessary, and would absolutely lead to a large financial windfall for the New York based firm.
The World Health Organization is calling for vaccine manufacturers to work on developing longer lasting, stronger, vaccines that will be effective against future Covid variants. The agency's TAG-CO-VAC work group believes the regular distribution of booster shots is not feasible. Pictured: A man in Los Angeles, California, receives a shot of a COVID-19 vaccine on January 7
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla (pictured) said earlier this week that regular Covid booster shots would likely be necessary in order to control the virus over the next ten years
'With near- and medium-term supply of the available vaccines, the need for equity in access to vaccines across countries to achieve global public health goals, programmatic considerations including vaccine demand, and evolution of the virus, a vaccination strategy based on repeated booster doses of the original vaccine composition is unlikely to be appropriate or sustainable,' TAG-CO-VAC wrote.
The current crop of vaccines have been deemed safe and effective by health officials, but the protection offered by the shots wanes over time.
Even before the rise of the vaccine-evasive Omicron Covid variant, health officials in the U.S., Israel and many European countries were rolling out booster shots to make up gaps in vaccine protection that open over time.
In the U.S., a person six months removed from receiving the Pfizer vaccine, five months from the Moderna, or two months from receiving the Johnson & Johnson jab are recommended to receive a booster dose.
The WHO working group says future vaccines should: 'be based on strains that are genetically and antigenically close to the circulating SARS-CoV-2 variant(s)'
'in addition to protection against severe disease and death, be more effective in protection against infection thus lowering community transmission and the need for stringent and broad-reaching
