(Reuters) – On Wednesday, researchers urged governments to delay administering the second dose of Pfizer Inc’s COVID-19 vaccine, which they said was 92.6% effective after the first dose.
The researchers, Danuta Skowronski and Gaston De Serres, said their findings were derived from Pfizer documents sent to the US Food and Drug Administration.
These findings were also similar to the effectiveness of the first 92.1% dose reported for Moderna Inc’s mRNA-1273 vaccine, Skowronski and De Serres said in their published letter https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056 / NEJMc2036242 in The new English medical journal.
They warned that there may be uncertainty about the duration of protection with a single dose, but said that the administration of the second dose a month after the first one provided “little additional benefit in the short term”.
“Given the current shortage of the vaccine, postponing the second dose is a national security issue that, if ignored, will certainly result in thousands of hospitalizations and deaths related to COVID-19 this winter in the United States,” warned the authors.
In its response, Pfizer said that the alternative dosage regimens for its vaccine have not yet been evaluated and that the decision to do so rests with health officials.
“We at Pfizer believe that it is critical for health authorities to be vigilant about alternative dosing schemes implemented to ensure that vaccines provide the maximum possible protection,” he added.
(Reporting by Shubham Kalia in Bengaluru; Editing by Vinay Dwivedi)