Filenews 17 February 2022 - by Marilena Panagi
A distress signal for the elderly, but also for the vulnerable, sends the results of all recent international studies concerning the levels of immunity after the lapse of four months from the receipt of the third dose, since it is found that the risk for serious illness and death returns to a very large percentage. Specifically, as announced by the U.S. Center for Infection Control, while in the two months after receiving the third dose the effectiveness of vaccines was at 91%, with the passage of two months, it fell to 78% with a clear downward trend.
Based on these data, several European countries, including Denmark, Sweden, Greece and Hungary, have already taken an official decision to administer a fourth dose of vaccine to specific categories of citizens, with their governments citing the increase in positive cases, hospitalizations and deaths of elderly people, mainly people living inside and outside nursing homes.
Similar data are recorded in Cyprus in recent weeks, since both the number of elderly people who have received all three doses of the vaccine and are infected with the virus, shows a steady increase, inside and outside nursing homes, as well as the deaths of people of this category have shown a significant difference compared to January.
Specifically, and according to the official report in their hands of Cypriot scientists, who are now called to give their own recommendations, "in the whole of January, nine deaths (out of a total of 96 registered deaths, up to the day of recording data), of people with three doses (all over 60 years of age), had been recorded, while, in the first ten days of February, six deaths had been recorded out of a total of 27 registered deaths, until the day of recording of data)'. At the same time, as noted in the relevant report, "as far as the deaths of elderly people in nursing homes are concerned, a total of 13 people died between 1 January and 10 February. In the over-80 age group, five deaths were recorded in the category of unvaccinated and five in the category of people who received all three doses."
In recent days, in the Ministry of Health, the competent departments record all the data in detail since the Unit of Epidemiological Surveillance of Infectious Diseases collects daily the percentages of people who are positively shown by the virus and have received all three doses of the vaccine, with particular attention to the percentages that concern the elderly, and the vulnerable.
These data, as the Associate Professor of Pharmacology, member of the Advisory Scientific Committee and the National Committee for Vaccinations, Christos Petrou, told "F", "it is expected that they will soon be studied by the Vaccination Committee, which is the one responsible for taking the relevant decisions".
"The National Immunization Committee will be called in the coming days to take relevant decisions after the necessary data have been available and such a decision has been substantiated," Mr. Petrou said, adding that "several EU member states are proceeding with an evaluation of their own data and are proceeding". At the same time, he cited as an example Sweden, which, as he said, "has begun the administration of a fourth dose to people over the age of 80, without waiting for a recommendation from the European Medicines Agency".
The decision to be taken, he stressed, "must be based on the profile of the people who received the third dose and end up in hospital. That is, when they received a third dose, health status (age, immunosuppression, transplantation or other risk/vulnerability category), and this decision cannot be long in coming."
This is because, "published data and analyses report that the effectiveness of mRNA vaccines in relation to preventing hospitalization decreases with the time after the adjuvant dose. Specifically, four months after the third dose, the efficacy is reduced to 78% from 96% two months after the third dose. The study, published on the CDC's page, has several limitations, but it comes to contribute to the knowledge about the protection provided after a few months after the third dose to specific vulnerable populations such as the elderly and the immunosuppressed. A fourth dose will need to be done in these groups at a certain time."
It is recalled that people over 60 years of age in Cyprus received the third dose of vaccine since the beginning of September 2021 and are therefore already in the fourth month after their booster vaccination."
"The fourth dose should not be planned for the general population, for younger and healthy adults," Mr. Petrou stressed, adding that "there is no data that supports the need for them now." It's different, he explained, "if they're going to need to do a new dose, for example in the fall, but then we're going to be talking about annual vaccination and not a second booster."
