Pfizer developing booster shot to combat COVID-19 Delta variant

Pfizer and BioNTech said Thursday they are developing a COVID-19 booster shot to target the highly transmissible Delta variant.

In an email to Global News, the companies confirmed that they have seen “encouraging data in the ongoing booster trial” of the vaccine that suggests that a third shot of the two-dose Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has the capacity to offer the “highest levels” of protection against known COVID-19 variants, including the Delta.

The updated version of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine targets “the full spike protein of the Delta variant,” according to their emailed statement and the drugmakers expect that a third dose will boost “antibody titers even higher, similar to how the third dose performs for the Beta variant (B.1.351).”

The companies are conducting pre-clinical and clinical tests to confirm this hypothesis and the “first batch of the mRNA for the trial has already been manufactured at BioNTech’s facility in Mainz, Germany.”

More to come…

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