Pfizer CEO predicts return to ‘normal’ globally by 2022 end

New York: Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla told CNBC on Wednesday he expects life could return to normal from the pandemic for developed countries by the end of this year and the rest of the world by the end of 2022.

Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel, in an interview with the German-language Neue Zürcher Zeitung, also predicted that the pandemic phase will be over in a year.

Bourla told CNBC Evolve Global Summit that by the end of next year, there should be enough Covid-19 vaccine doses for most world leaders to successfully inoculate their populations against the virus,

“I think the whole world will have enough volumes [of vaccine doses] by the end of 2022 to vaccinate, to protect everyone,” he said. “And I think that by the end of this year, the developed world will already be in this situation.”

Bourla said an annual vaccination would be the most likely outcome, much as people get an annual flu vaccine to help battle those disease variants.

Pfizer and German partner BioNTech reached the milestone of manufacturing 1 billion doses of their Covid vaccine last week, Bourla told CNBC. The two companies expect to produce up to 3 billion doses this year.

Pfizer and BioNTech previously pledged to provide 2 billion doses of the vaccine to low- and middle-income countries.

The U.S. has committed to donating 80 million Covid shots from four drugmakers. It plans to allocate the majority of the vaccines through COVAX, the World Health Organization-backed global vaccine sharing program.

The company is also preparing to manufacture booster shots, he said. The CEO has previously told CNBC that people will likely need booster doses within 12 months of getting fully vaccinated and potentially additional doses annually.

He also touted that the company is working on treatments for those who do get infected.

Bourla told CNBC in April that the company’s experimental oral drug to treat Covid-19 at the first sign of illness could be available by the end of the year.

Image courtesy of (Photo courtesy Reuters)

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