CDC Committee Could Recommend Pfizer Boosters for 65+ on Friday, Analyst Says

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and federal health authorities have been at loggerheads in recent weeks over the need for booster doses of Covid-19 vaccines, but that could end soon, Jefferies analyst Michael Yee wrote in a note out late Tuesday.

Yee wrote that he expects the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory committee to recommend booster doses of

Pfizer’s

(ticker: PFE) vaccine for the immunocompromised and for adults aged 65 and older at its meeting this Friday.

He said he expects the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to update its emergency-use authorization to include booster doses for those groups by Labor Day. “We are adamant boosters for 2021-22 are coming,” Yee wrote in the note, which focused on Pfizer competitor

Moderna

(MRNA).

According to a draft agenda for the Friday meeting posted earlier this week by the CDC, a CDC staffer will present to the committee on “updates on additional doses in immunocompromised individuals,” and another will present on “considerations for booster doses of COVID-19 vaccines.”

Yee noted that Moderna has said it will ask for authorization for a booster dose this winter. He wrote that he estimates that the FDA will approve boosts for the majority of the population by then, at which point he expects more symptomatic infections among vaccinated people.

“New data shows antibodies against Delta wane after 6-8m and breakthrough against Delta is rising,” Yee wrote. “We expect FDA to move to booster approvals.”

In early July, the FDA and CDC pushed back hard on Pfizer’s announcement that the company planned to submit data supporting an emergency-use authorization for a booster dose of their Covid-19 vaccine, saying that fully vaccinated Americans “do not need a booster shot at this time” in a statement issued hours after Pfizer’s announcement.

In recent days, however, new data has raised urgent questions about the need for boosters. In a paper posted to a preprint server on Sunday, which has not yet been peer reviewed, doctors at the Mayo Clinic reported on a study that had found that effectiveness of both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines against infection had dropped as the Delta variant had become dominant.

Real-world efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine against infection with the virus that causes Covid-19 was 76% from January through July in the study population, and of the Moderna vaccine was 86%. During July, however, when Delta was dominant in Minnesota, where the study was conducted, effectiveness against infection was just 42% for the Pfizer vaccine, and 76% for the Moderna vaccine.

“Our observational study suggests that while both mRNA COVID-19 vaccines strongly protect against infection and severe disease, there are differences in their real-world effectiveness relative to each other and relative to prior months of the pandemic,” the study’s authors wrote.

Meanwhile, federal health authorities’ tones have shifted. At a meeting on July 22, the CDC vaccine advisory committee, known as the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, signaled early support for giving Covid-19 boosters to the immunocompromised. At the meeting, a CDC official told the committee that immunocompromised people don’t respond as well to Covid-19 vaccines as healthy people, and that boosters increase their antibody responses.

In an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, President Biden’s chief medical advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said that he was “strongly in favor” of an additional dose of the vaccines for immunocompromised people “as soon as possible.”

Fauci said that he expects protection to wane for the elderly at some point, as well. “As soon as it looks like it’s getting down below a critical point, then we’re going to get the vaccines for those individuals,” he said.

Jefferies’ Yee, in his note, cited a handful of studies showing antibody response provided by the vaccine dropping after six to eight months, and suggesting that antibody responses are key to the vaccine’s efficacy. “Net-net, these data points suggest infections will start to rise since most of the USA got vaccinated in Q1-Q2 so by Winter 2021 infection in vaccinated will rise from current low levels,” Yee wrote.

Yee has a Hold rating on Moderna, and a $425 target price. Moderna closed at $456.76 on Tuesday after dropping 5.7%. The shares were down another 2.8% in premarket trading on Wednesday, to $444.09. The stock jumped 17.1% on Monday, and is up 337.2% so far this year.

Pfizer, for its part, climbed 4.8% on Tuesday, and is up 30.9% so far this year. Pfizer shares hit a 52-week high of $48.57 on Tuesday before closing at $48.19. The stock was down 0.8% in the premarket hours on Monday.

Write to Josh Nathan-Kazis at [email protected]