(Reuters) -Pfizer expects 24% vaccination rate for COVID-19 shots in the United States this year, Chief Financial Officer David Denton said at a conference on Monday, which equates to roughly 82 million people.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has authorized updated COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer and its partner BioNTech as well as from Moderna as the country prepares to start a fall vaccination campaign. A third vaccine from Novavax is also under review.
During the last re-vaccination campaign, when most Americans had either already had the COVID virus or been previously vaccinated, only around 56.5 million people got the updated booster shots, according to federal data.
But last week, a Reuters/Ipos poll showed that about half of Americans are interested in getting an updated COVID-19 vaccine.
Rival Moderna has also said it expects U.S. demand for the shots to reach 50 million-100 million doses in the fall season.
Demand for COVID vaccines has dropped sharply since 2021, when they first became available.
Pfizer had said in August it will launch a cost-cutting program if its COVID-19 vaccine and antiviral treatment keep underperforming expectations in the coming months due to plunging demand.
At the J.P. Morgan U.S. All Stars Conference, Denton said Pfizer will provide more details on its cost-cutting measures in the second half of the year.
“We want to make sure that we’re investing appropriately based on our R&D pipeline and the investments that we’re making and bets that we made … are aligned to the revenue performance of the company long term,” said Denton.
(Reporting by Bhanvi Satija and Manas Mishra in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri)
