It is not yet clear whether maintenance doses will be needed once a year or every six months, he said.
In an interview with the PA news agency on the occasion of the first vaccination of Covid-19 vaccine as part of a mass vaccination campaign, Osborne said the campaign had been an “unprecedented event” in the UK.
Commenting on the omicron type of the virus, Osborne said: “We are all looking forward to the release of various data not only from Pfizer and BioNTech, but also from governments and healthcare systems around the world.”
Asked how long people will need a booster dose, Osborne said: “I think it’s hard to say how many years it will be because none of us can predict how the virus will develop over time.”
“However, I believe that science and data show us that we are likely to need a certain level of support for the adult population over the next few years,” Osborne said. “What we don’t know is whether it will be a six-month maintenance dose, as we have now, or whether it will be a flu-like maintenance dose each year.”
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