After several months of tug of war, it seems that the situation in Spain of The much vaunted third dose of the Covid-19 vaccine begins to clear up. This Wednesday, the Minister of Health, Carolina Darias, reported that the Vaccine Conference, in charge of scientific advice on the Spanish vaccination strategy, saw fit the inoculation of an additional dose in immunosuppressed people.
The announcement was made on the same day that the largest scientific-health bodies on the continent, the European Center for Disease Control (ECDC) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA), spoke in favor of the dose as part of an expanded regimen in these types of people, not as a booster vaccine for the general population, for which, at present, there is insufficient evidence.
There is a latent issue. “It is a very heterogeneous group,” he warns Yvelise Barrios, member of the Spanish Society of Immunology. A person can be immunosuppressed for many reasons. “There are more than 400 different genes that can be affected in primary immunodeficiencies“, That is, those diseases due to an intrinsic defect of the immune system.
To this group must be added another one that is even more heterogeneous, that of secondary immunodeficiencies, produced by some type of immunosuppressive treatment, either to treat cancer or receive an organ through transplantation. In addition, there are people infected with HIV, the vast majority with the virus under control but under follow-up to avoid problems.
It is not the first time that the vaccination strategy has focused on them. They were already part of the prioritized groups in the first months to receive immunization, along with others such as people with Down syndrome and over 40 years of age. The strategy estimated that the total number of immunosuppressed people was more than 350,000 people, more than half of whom are people with solid tumors receiving chemotherapy or radiotherapy, or have metastasis (the tumor has spread to other parts of the body) .
Solid organ transplants
Now, however, the situation seems to be narrowing. The Federation of Spanish Scientific-Medical Associations (Facme) already collaborated at the time with the strategy by setting the groups of patients with the highest risk of severe Covid (later the strategy reduced them from 14 to 8) and has now prepared a positioning on the additional dose of the vaccine which will be taken to the Public Health Commission to determine which patients will receive it.
In this position, two main groups are established for which scientific evidence advises this third dose as part of an expanded vaccination regimen that guarantees an antibody response comparable to the general population: solid organ transplant patients and kidney dialysis patients. In total, it would be less than 90,000 people.
You can read here the full article of El Español.
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