Omicron
Pressure for earlier Corona booster vaccination – fourth spade from summer?
Experts are pushing for the interval between the second and third vaccination to be shortened
© Marijan Murat / DPA
The Infection Protection Act has just been improved. But the coronavirus is changing and the new omicron mutant may be even more contagious than Delta. Experts are now pushing to adjust the vaccinations.
The long, stalled corona vaccination campaign is gradually picking up the pace, but it is already becoming apparent that the current booster vaccinations will not be the last either. “We expect that a fourth vaccination will be necessary in the summer, at the latest in autumn,” said General Practitioner Association boss Ulrich Weigeldt of the “Bild” newspaper (Saturday). He hoped that the fourth corona vaccination could then be administered “in conjunction with the flu vaccination” “in order to make protection against corona into a routine”.
This could also be necessary because of the new virus variant Omikron, which is possibly even more contagious than the currently dominant, highly infectious Delta variant. The manufacturers Biontech / Pfizer want to provide a vaccine adapted to Omikron by March – subject to official approval. However, they assume that the vaccine they are currently using will continue to protect against serious illness – but also assume that, given Omikron, two doses are no longer a complete vaccination.
Experts: Omikron will prevail
Experts expect the Omikron variant to spread very quickly. “We expect this mutation to slowly become the dominant variant at the beginning of next year,” said the president of the intensive care medicine association Divi, Gernot Marx, of the “Passauer Neue Presse” (Saturday). His colleague Christian Karagiannidis had spoken of the end of January.
In view of this, experts such as the chairman of the German Society for Infectious Diseases, Bernd Salzberger, are pushing for a shortening of the interval between the second and third vaccination. The Standing Vaccination Commission has usually recommended six months so far, but depending on the federal state, it is also possible earlier. A quicker booster vaccination could influence the spread of both the delta and the omicron variant, “the experience from Israel shows that very impressively,” Salzberger told the newspapers of the Funke media group.
The Green health politician Janosch Dahmen, who is himself a doctor, told the Düsseldorf “Rheinische Post” (Saturday): “We now have to get into the mode of a forward-looking pandemic policy. We won’t feel the consequences of Omikron tomorrow, but we have to today Arm ourselves against it. Boosting is effective and crucial, as the current data shows. We will also have to bring the timing of the booster vaccinations forward. “
According to the figures published on Friday by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), more than 950,000 booster vaccinations were given the day before, the second highest value so far. In addition, there were a good 77,000 first and just as many second vaccinations. Overall, with 1.1 million vaccinations, it was the second most since the early summer. This means that a good 17 million people currently have full and refreshed vaccination protection. With 83 million inhabitants, that’s around 20 percent.
The chairman of the Prime Minister’s Conference, North Rhine-Westphalia Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst (CDU), still considers the improvements to the Infection Protection Act of the traffic light government decided by the Bundestag and Bundesrat on Friday to be inadequate. “We would have liked more – precisely because of the Omikron variant,” he told the editorial network in Germany. “If the significantly more infectious Omikron variant continues to challenge us, it may prove to be a mistake that the federal government ruled out a number of measures from the outset that were still possible until November.” This includes, if necessary, the prohibition of unnecessary travel in Germany, especially in regions with an extremely high number of infections.
The regulations that have been adopted include compulsory testing for employees in clinics, nursing homes and medical practices, for example. It is now expressly possible to close the catering trade again, including the prohibition of certain major events.