Expanding the fourth dose to other age groups after the summer, currently only for over eighty-year-olds, guests of the RSA and frail people over 60: the Minister of Health Roberto Speranza is working on expanding the audience of people who can be vaccinated with the second booster in view of the autumn immunization campaign against Covid. So far, however, the fourth dose has gone slowly: only a quarter of the potential audience has received the further recall.
Only a fifth of the over 80s with a second booster
Reservations for the fourth dose for over 80s, guests of the RSA and frail people aged 60 and over, began on April 12, 2022, after the green light from the Italian Medicines Agency. Three months later, the situation is the one described by the Undersecretary of Health, Andrea Costa: “We must note that there has been a slowdown and this is not positive: we must use every moment to renew the appeal to all those for whom it is expected the fourth dose, as elderly and ultra-frail ». In numbers: according to the calculations of Lab24 only 24.6% of the audience who could receive the fourth dose turns out to have had the anti-Covid injection, a percentage that drops to 19.2% (less than a fifth) among the over 80s. .
Piedmont first, Calabria last
As always, there are huge differences between regions. In Piedmont the percentage is more than double the national average (52.4%). Followed but detached from Emilia-Romagna and Lazio (respectively 39.2 and 30.4). Liguria, Tuscany and Lombardy are also doing better than average. Calabria is last with just 7.6% who received the fourth dose but Basilicata is also below 10%.
“It is wrong to wait for the new vaccines”
Responsibility for failure? It is also of “those who recommend waiting for new vaccines, because the current ones would no longer be needed,” said Fabrizio Pregliasco, professor of Hygiene at the State University of Milan. «A wide and extensive vaccination as possible is welcome. Taking the fourth dose is essential, even lowering the age limit currently set, because the situation requires it. An erroneous narrative, even on the part of some family doctors – he underlines – has curbed a vaccination that is true that it is based on the Wuhan Sars-CoV-2 strain “(original coronavirus, ndr) “But in any case gives a valid reinforcement to the immune defenses” of the people most at risk of complications of the infection.