The fourth doses (or rather: second boosters) of an anti-Covid vaccine they do not go well among the targets that could receive them immediately. And that they should undergo the second recall, considering this summer of high circulation of the virus. Only 28.8% of those over 80 and immunocompromised – the two audiences who can access the injection – he is vaccinated. Perhaps the numbers in the bulletin these days will push that figure a little higher, but it is still an answer deemed insufficient by experts. Covid has not disappeared and if it is true that the variants of the Omicron lineage seem less pathogenic for certain categories, it can still be very dangerous. And then in the end they seem so to us precisely by virtue of mass vaccination.
The fourth dose is therefore intended for people over 80 years oldai guests of the RSA (assisted health residences) and to those who have been included in the categories at risk with an age between 60 and 79 years. Fragility and age, which often – not always, obviously – coincide. These people not only have to undergo the fourth dose but should definitely, if they have not, proceeded to the third. These are people who, as the ministerial circulars note, suffer from “a marked impairment of the immune response linked to chronic pathologies or pharmacological treatments and to subjects undergoing organ transplantation”. It is useless to wait for the autumn or for any updated vaccines designed on the basis of Omicron 1: protection, which with the fourth dose is restored to satisfactory levels and within a few days, is needed at this time.
In the autumn it will be the turn of all the others, according to the indications of the Ministry of Health and the Higher Institute of Health. Maybe over 50like the virologist Fabrizio Pregliasco confirm today at Republic: “I would not exclude the opportunity to extend to the over 50s too. I believe that Covid vaccination in the future should become like influenza vaccination, that is, annual and with access even before the age of 60”. Under 50, if the model were the flu one, it should be anyway possible on a voluntary basis.
Returning to the over 80s and the immunocompromised, if they have had the infection after receiving the third dose they may actually consider it as an additional booster. But only if this happened from less than four months. After that window, it’s best to take another dose anyway – by the way, Pfizer and Moderna products are currently being used. Obviously, if you have infected yourself and have not been aware of it, a dose even under that window does not constitute any danger.
«The fourth dose increases the antibodies rapidly: after 8 days they are already at their maximum. It is estimated that the wave will peak between 15 and 30 July with 150,000 cases. But then it will take all of August to go down – concludes Pregliasco – and two months is the protection offered by the fourth dose. The virus continues to circulate: we are in a transition phase between the epidemic and the endemic trend. At the moment there is an undulating trend, like the circles that are formed by throwing a stone into a pond ».
Covid vaccine, here’s where and who is getting the fourth dose
Walter Ricciardi: “Probable fourth anti-Covid dose for everyone in the autumn”
Source: Vanity Fair
