Genova. “We need to speed up with the fourth doses for over 65s and frailties. They are still too few. The elderly and frail people who received the third dose more than 8-10 months earlier begin to arrive at the hospital with forms, even demanding ones.“. To sound the alarm is Matteo Bassettidirector of the infectious disease clinic of the San Martino hospital in Genoa.
“Need focus on these at-risk categories without wasting energy and time to vaccinate all the others – Bassetti continues, speaking through his Facebook page -. The next three weeks will be decisive to understand how next autumn / winter will go with Covid and then with the flu, which should not be underestimated “.
Concept that the Genoese infectious disease specialist had already expressed when in Liguria, on the recommendation of the Ministry of Health, the bookings of the fourth dose for all over 12, regardless of age or pathological conditions. “Opening up to everyone was a mistake – he had said in Genoa24 -. One hundred twenty-year-olds without a fourth dose weigh much less on the health system than an 80-year-old without a fourth dose. I would focus on those over 65 and those who are younger but suffer from frailty such as leukemia or chronic bronchitis.
As the Ministry of Health has made clear, the fourth dose with the new bivalent vaccines updated to the variants remains recommended “as a matter of priority” for “all people aged 60 or over, people with high frailty motivated by concomitant / pre-existing pathologies aged 12 or over, health workers, guests and operators of residential structures and pregnant women “. But the circular of five days ago introduced something new: the new vaccines “may be made available, at the request of the interested party, as a second booster dose for the vaccination of subjects of at least 12 years of age, who have already received the first booster dose for at least 120 days “or have healed at the same time.