Pfizer Inc said on Monday it began testing fully vaccinated adults over 65 in a new study that uses the company’s 20-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (20vPnC) candidate with a third dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 shot.
The aim of the study is to understand if the combination of the 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 against 20 serotypes responsible for the majority of invasive pneumococcal disease and pneumonia.
COVID-19 vaccines were previously recommended to be administered alone. But based on experience with non-COVID vaccines, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said COVID-19 shots and other vaccines can be given simultaneously or on the same day.
In December, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) accepted for a priority review Pfizer’s biologics license application for the investigational 20vPnC in adults over 18 and set an action date for a decision in June. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) accepted the company’s marketing authorization application for 20vPnC two months later.
