Covid, fourth dose and serious disease protection: what we know

Israel leads the way

In fact, on January 2, 2022, Israel began to administer a fourth dose of anti-Covid vaccine to over 60s (the one in mRna of Pfizer/BioNTech BNT162b2). In the wake of this campaign, a team of researchers has produced a new study, just published in the ‘New England Journal of Medicine‘, which adds information on the value of a second booster, among other things with data relating to the era of the Omicron variant.

I study

Work conducted by the Israeli Ministry of Health, three major universities in the country and Sheba Medical Center, Israel’s largest hospital, finds that a fourth dose of the anti-Covid vaccine triples the protection against serious illness in people aged 60 and overi, compared to a three-dose protection, according to what the ministry said, which illustrated some of the results.

Short but certain protection

As for the duration of protection, that against infection appeared to be short termwhile protection against severe disease did not decrease during the study period.

Using the ministry’s database, the researchers extracted data on over 1.2 million people aged 60 and over and eligible for a fourth dose. The period considered is that in which the Omicron variant of Sars-CoV-2 was predominant, between January 10 and March 2, 2022. If the severe disease rate was three times lower among fourth dose vaccinates, and protection was not decreased during the 8-week period of the study, the situation was different for the infection: the rate of cases verified among the fourth dose vaccinated was twice as low as in the three dose group, but the protection against confirmed contagion is seemed to diminish, suggesting a short duration, according to the study.

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