Pfizer is speeding up research on COVID-19 vaccines because there is a “huge possibility” that existing shots against the deadly bug will not be effective in the future.
“It is very likely that this will happen one day,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said during a panel at the 2021 virtual Davos World Economic Forum.
Bourla hopes to reduce the time it takes to recognize a threat of pandemic infectious infections to vaccination to 100 days or less, Business Insider reports. This is a third of the time of the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed.
COVID vaccines have been produced at record speed thanks to technological advances, major funding efforts and the public’s willingness to participate in trials, reports the Daily Mail.
New York-based Pfizer, which developed its vaccine with German BioNTech, was first out of the gate with a COVID-19 vaccine approval.
Bourla said the company never dreamed the vaccine would be 95 percent effective. “Almost perfect,” he boasted. Pfizer’s recording is one of two versions offered in New York City.
In contrast, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is only 66 percent effective, although it is better to prevent hospitalization and death than the disease itself.
Bourla said he is aiming to ensure that the Pfizer shot remains very effective as the virus mutates. So far, it has only been tested on laboratory versions of the variants found in the United Kingdom and South Africa, both of which have appeared in the USA.
The CEO also paid attention to distribution issues, which he said were bumpy. “I am very optimistic, very soon we will be able to give the doses we promised the world,” Bourla said. By the beginning of the summer, the world needs what it needs, he said. Pfizer aims to produce 2 billion doses.