People who become infected with COVID will have to wait at least four weeks after diagnosis to receive a booster dose of the vaccine, if applicable. This has been published this Wednesday by the Ministry of Health in the tenth update of the Vaccination strategy against covid-19 in Spain. At the moment, the third dose is recommended for people over 40 years of age, who will be able to receive it (regardless of whether they have been infected) from six months if the last dose of Pfizer or Moderna and from three months if it is from AstraZeneca or Janssen.
The strategy prioritized the booster dose in immunosuppressed people and people over 60 years of age, who are those who are most at risk of complications after infection and those in whom a third injection was shown to be more useful. According to the latest Health report, 83% of this population has already received the third dose (or second, in the case of those who were inoculated with Janssen).
Subsequently, Health also opened the possibility of being vaccinated with the booster to all those over 40 years of age. The ministry asked the communities to prioritize those who were over 50, of which a third have already received their third dose. The following decade, the forty-something, have already started in some autonomies and 18% already have the reinforcement.
Among these age groups, however, the administration of the booster regimen will advance as they complete six months of the last dose, which for the majority of 40-year-olds who did not belong to essential services arrived between July and August. It would be their turn, therefore, between this month and next.
But the explosion of omicron cases that is taking place this Christmas will delay these immunizations for tens of thousands of people, since everyone who is infected will have to wait those four weeks that the strategy now establishes. In the last week, more than 700,000 people have been infected and the contagion curve continues to rise.
In any case, the double guideline continues to provide high protection against serious illness for people up to 60 years of age. It is very rare for people between the ages of 40 and 59 to require hospitalization if they are vaccinated, much less end up in intensive care or die. But the increase in infections is being of such caliber, that even that low portion is being transformed into a considerable number, which has produced that hospitals have more admitted than in the peaks of the fourth and fifth waves.
The new document also establishes that for those people who are infected and have not yet been vaccinated (only 10% of those over 12 years of age are unvaccinated), the complete regimen will consist of a single dose four weeks after infection (two in case of those over 65 years). “To those who need a vaccination certificate with at least two doses, for example, for international travel or studies, a second can be administered. This second dose will be considered a booster dose ”, reads the document.
This is done because, although that second dose is not considered necessary to consider that the regimen is complete, since the natural infection also helps protection, it is not harmful either. Some countries do not support this guideline and require their visitors to have received two injections, whether the disease has passed or not.
The tenth update of the vaccination strategy includes for the first time the guideline for children between five and 12 years old, which had already been approved by the Public Health Commission in December. They will receive the second injection eight weeks after the first. If they have passed the infection, they will receive a single dose starting four weeks after diagnosis or the date of onset of symptoms. In case of infection after having received the first dose, the regimen will be completed when four weeks have elapsed after the infection, always maintaining the eight-week interval with respect to the first dose.
–
