Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla announced Monday that he has tested positive for COVID-19 — and praised his company’s vaccines while announcing his diagnosis.
“I would like to let you know that I have tested positive for #COVID19. I am thankful to have received four doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, and I am feeling well while experiencing very mild symptoms. I am isolating and have started a course of Paxlovid,” he said in a series of tweets.
“We have come so far in our efforts to battle this disease that I am confident I will have a speedy recovery,” Bourla said. “I am incredibly grateful for the tireless efforts of my Pfizer colleagues who worked to make vaccines and treatments available for me and people around the world.”
We have come so far in our efforts to battle this disease that I am confident I will have a speedy recovery. I am incredibly grateful for the tireless efforts of my Pfizer colleagues who worked to make vaccines and treatments available for me and people around the world.
— Albert Bourla (@AlbertBourla) August 15, 2022
Bourla concluded by focusing on Paxlovid, a drug developed by Pfizer that was also given to President Joe Biden when he had the virus last month.
“Paxlovid is not approved, but is authorized for emergency use by the FDA to treat mild-to-moderate COVID-19 in high-risk patients 12+, weighing at least 40 kg [88 pounds], with positive results of SARS-CoV-2 viral testing,” he wrote.
Paxlovid is not approved, but is authorized for emergency use by the FDA to treat mild-to-moderate COVID-19 in high-risk patients 12+, weighing at least 40 kg, with positive results of SARS-CoV-2 viral testing. See safety info: https://t.co/XqokFVKBC7.
— Albert Bourla (@AlbertBourla) August 15, 2022
Last week, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revised its guidelines for those who test positive for COVD-19.
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Chief among these guidelines was that unvaccinated individuals no longer need to quarantine after testing positive.
“We know that COVID-19 is here to stay,” Greta Massetti, a CDC epidemiologist, said last week, according to The New York Times. “High levels of population immunity due to vaccination and previous infection, and the many tools that we have available to protect people from severe illness and death, have put us in a different place.”
One researcher said the CDC had caught up with the American people.
“I think they are attempting to meet up with the reality that everyone in the public is pretty much done with this pandemic,” said Michael T. Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota.
Looking ahead, experts are cautious about how COVID-19 will change, according to NBC’s “Today.”
“I would never have expected, you know, in the middle of summer in a heatwave, we would have a surge in cases two and a half years into this pandemic,” said Dr. Scott Roberts, associate professor and associate medical director for infection prevention at Yale School of Medicine.
“We seem to be on these two-month wave cycles,” Roberts said.
He said he expected the BA.5 variant, the culprit for most current COVID-19 cases, will fade soon with a spike again in cases after October, in keeping with past years’ trends.
Roberts said his expected scenario is more variants will emerge that to some extent evade protection offered by existing vaccines.
“This disease will continue to be in endemic circulation that, at some point, will follow a more seasonal pattern,” with fall and winter surges, he said.
“I don’t think we’ll have a point where we can plant the flag in the ground and say COVID is over,” Dr. Taison Bell, assistant professor of medicine in the divisions of infectious diseases and international health and pulmonary and critical care medicine at the University of Virginia, said, according to “Today.” “This [virus] has shown the ability to survive and thrive in every season of each year since we’ve gotten to know it.”
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