Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla on Monday said two doses of the company's vaccine may not provide strong protection against infection from the Covid omicron variant, and the original shots have also lost some of their efficacy at preventing hospitalization. Bourla, in an interview at JPMorgan's health-care conference, emphasized the importance of a third shot to boost people's protection against omicron. "The two doses, they're not enough for omicron," Bourla said. "The third dose of the current vaccine is providing quite good protection against deaths, and decent protection against hospitalizations." Bourla said omicron is a more difficult target than previous variants. Omicron, which has dozens of mutations, can evade some of the protection provided by Pfizer's original two shots. Two-doses of Pfizer's or Moderna's vaccines are only about 10% effective at preventing infection from omicron 20 weeks after the second dose. A booster dose ... is up to 75% effective at preventing symptomatic infection and 88% effective at preventing hospitalization. However ... the U.K. Health Security Agency also found that boosters are only 40% to 50% effective against infection 10 weeks after receiving the shot.
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