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- Moderna's CEO said some Americans could need a booster shot as soon as September.
- The third shot would come eight or nine months after the initial vaccine.
- Populations who were vaccinated in December or January, like healthcare workers, would be up first.
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Many Americans could start receiving booster shots as soon as this fall.
Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said in an email on Wednesday that people who are at highest risk from COVID-19, like healthcare workers and the elderly, could require a third shot in September, Axios' Caitlin Owens reports.
Those populations started receiving their vaccines in December or January, meaning the booster shot would come eight or nine months after their were initially vaccinated.
"I think as a country we should rather be two months too early, than two months too late with outbreaks in several places," Bancel said, according to Axios.
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla echoed that timeline during an interview with Axios on Wednesday, saying that the data he's seen supports administering a booster shot "somewhere between eight and 12 months" after people are first vaccinated.
Moderna told investors in April that Americans and other countries that have quickly inoculated their residents would likely need a booster shot later this year or in 2022 in order to protect against coronavirus variants. Other countries will continue administering the initial doses.
"I hope this summer to get the vaccine authorized for a boost so that we can help people getting boosted before the fall, so that we all have a normal fall and not a fall and winter like we just saw in the last six months," Bancel said in an interview with Insider in April.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the US has administered more than 118 million doses of the Moderna shot as of May 19, and 125 million Americans are fully vaccinated, equivalent to about 38% of the population. In other parts of the world, delays in vaccine rollouts and the rise in new coronavirus variants have led to a surge in cases and upwards of thousands of deaths per day in countries like India and Brazil. About 10% of the global population is estimated to be fully vaccinated, according to Bloomberg.