Dr. Eric Topol explains why an FDA panel rejected a Pfizer Covid booster shot proposal for the general public
More Americans will need a third Covid vaccine booster shot as immunity wanes, according to Dr. Eric Topol, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute.
“Eventually, a lot more people are going to need these third shots. That was always part of the plan from the beginning,” Topol said on Friday’s episode of “Mad Money.”
A Food and Drug Administration advisory committee on Friday rejected a proposal to distribute booster shots of Pfizer and BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine to the general public. The panel did, however, recommend the third shot to people 65 years of age and older and other vulnerable Americans.
More research should provide better insights into the efficacy of booster vaccine shots, according to Topol.
“We’re going to get more data out of Israel, out of the UK and other places,” Topol said.
The Biden administration has said it wants to begin offering the third Covid vaccine shot to the general public as early as next week, as long as U.S. health regulators authorize the booster. The FDA in August authorized Covid vaccine booster shots for people with weakened immune systems.
“We got to have the hard truth. What it shows is we have more symptomatic infections starting around four to five months [after vaccination]. It’s going to affect all the vaccines eventually because this was never really conceived as a two shot story. It was going to be three shots,” Topol said.
