By dint of boosters, the vaccines currently available will eventually no longer cause the immune response to Covid. This is the alarm raised by EMA, the European regulatory body for medicines, which comes just as the EU member states are beginning to hypothesize the beginning of the campaign for the fourth dose.
“We can’t continue with boosters every 3-4 months.” This was stated by the head of the EMA vaccination strategy, Marco Cavaleri. “We do not yet have data on the fourth dose to be able to express ourselves, but we are concerned about a strategy that plans to move forward with vaccinations in a short time,” he explained.
“Obviously when it comes to vulnerable, and immunosuppressed people, it is a different case and for them the fourth dose can be considered already now,” added Cavaleri.
“If we have a strategy where we give boosters every four months there could eventually be problems with the immune response and it won’t be as good as we would like it to be. We should therefore be careful not to overload the system with repeated immunization, ”Cavaleri explained. “Furthermore, there is a risk of a” fatigue “in the population with the continued administration of the boosters. Now, if the epidemiological situation suggests that it may be the best option on the table it could be done once or twice but it is not something we can think of repeating constantly and it would be much better to start thinking about administering a more time-delayed and ideally delayed booster. , if we want to go towards immunity, this recall should be synchronized with the arrival of the colder season in each hemisphere, in a similar way to what we do with the flu », highlighted Cavaleri. “Now we have to think about how to move from this pandemic phase to an endemic phase where such a scenario would be the preferred option,” he concluded.
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