As Delta Variant Drives COVID-19 Uptick, Pfizer Pushes 3rd Shot in US Despite Global Vaccination Lag

After months of decline in COVID-19 cases in the United States due in part to widely available vaccines, the number of new cases per day is on the rise again.

Pfizer representatives met with U.S. regulators and vaccine experts to seek emergency use authorization for a second booster dose of its vaccine, as health experts are continuing to highlight the growing gap in administered vaccinations between rich and low-income countries.

“In the United States, we have access to multiple vaccines,” says Dr. Abraar Karan, an internal medicine doctor and infectious disease fellow at Stanford University School of Medicine. “Many countries have not seen any vaccine at all.”

He also says it’s too early to say whether a third vaccine dose is necessary, as Pfizer has insisted. “I hope the science is what guides this, not the financial aspects,” he says.

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