Pfizer said, the purpose of the study is to understand whether the combination of vaccines is safe, and the immune response after adding the pneumonia vaccine to the existing COVID-19 vaccine.
WORLD – Pfizer Inc. said on Monday that it began testing fully vaccinated adults over 65 years of age in a new study that combined the third dose of the Pfizer-BioNtech COVID-19 shot with the company’s 20-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (20vPnC) uses the candidate.
The purpose of the study is to understand whether the combination of vaccines is safe, and the immune response after adding the pneumonia vaccine to the existing COVID-19 vaccine, Pfizer said.
The vaccine candidate, 20vPnC, is being developed to help protect adults from the 20 serotypes responsible for most of the invasive pneumococcal disease and pneumonia.
The new study will include 600 adults who will be recruited from two companies’ late-stage COVID-19 vaccine study, after receiving their second dose of vaccine at least six months before entering the co-administration study.
COVID-19 vaccines were previously recommended to be administered alone. But based on experience with non-COVID vaccines, the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention has stated that COVID-19 shots and other vaccines may be given simultaneously or on a single day.
In December, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) accepted Pfizer’s Biologics License Application for Investigation 20vPnC in adults over 18 years of age for priority review and set an action date for the decision in June. The European Medicine Agency (EMA) accepted the company’s marketing authorization application for 20vPnC two months later.
Source: BusinessToday