Pfizer is asking the Food and Drug Administration to authorize a second booster dose of its COVID-19 vaccine for people 65 and older. The pharmaceutical company cited a pair of studies from Israel that showed a second booster helped restore the efficacy of the vaccine against infections and serious illness. Currently, a fourth dose of the vaccine is recommended for anybody over the age of 12 with a weakened immune system that makes them more susceptible to severe cases of COVID-19. The first study, which was conducted during a surge in cases from the Omicron variant, found that people who received a second booster at least four months after the first one were half as likely to be infected and four times less likely to develop a severe case of COVID-19. Pfizer’s CEO, Albert Bourla states that “Right now, the way that we have seen, it is necessary, a fourth booster right now. The protection that you are getting from the third, it is good enough, actually quite good for hospitalizations and deaths,” Bourla said on Face the Nation on Sunday (March 13th, 2022). A second study of health care workers showed that those who received a second booster shot had a ten-fold increase in protective antibodies two weeks later.