EU tries to coordinate on fourth dose of Covid vaccine

Europe 1 with AFP 9:19 p.m., March 29, 2022

European health ministers want to coordinate on the injection of a fourth dose of anti-Covid vaccine to the elderly or vulnerable and instructed the Commission on Tuesday to work on a common position on this subject by next week. .

At a meeting in Brussels, Germany and Italy called for a European recommendation for a second booster dose (a fourth dose for those who received a two-dose anti-Covid vaccine) for people over 60.

A decline in immunity four months after the third dose

“Scientific data are beginning to emerge which show a decrease in the immunity conferred by the third dose some four months after this third dose in people aged 60 and over,” said French Minister Olivier Véran, whose country ensures the Presidency of the Council of the EU, at the end of the meeting.

"The Council asked the European Commission to carry out coordination work with the various Member States, the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA)", "so that we we can adopt a common position", continued the Minister, who set "a maximum deadline of one week so as not to waste time".

"Today we see states that have opened the fourth dose to over 75s, others to over 80s, this is the case of France, another, the Netherlands, to over 60s years, others have not yet opened it, so that creates legitimate questions", explained Olivier Véran.

Germany currently recommends this fourth dose for people over 70, particularly vulnerable people and healthcare workers.

An 80% drop in mortality according to Israeli data

German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach had cited Israeli data, according to which this dose reduces mortality by 80%.

He stressed that it was all the more necessary since the vaccines adapted to the Omicron variant would not be available in the EU "before the autumn".

Karl Lauterbach added that "to his knowledge", the development of these vaccines adapted (to the variants of Covid-19) was "delayed".

"So I don't expect the new vaccines to be available until the fall," he said, "September could be a target month."

European Commissioner for Health Stella Kyriakides recalled that "Covid was still very present, with indicators on the rise in several EU countries, including in some cases hospitalizations and mortality".

“So vaccination remains essential,” she insisted.

The EMA had indicated on March 17 that the available data did not yet make it possible to recommend a new booster dose of anti-Covid vaccines to the entire population.

Regarding a new serum adapted to Omicron, BioNTech indicated on Tuesday its intention to "publish in the coming weeks first data" from clinical studies, according to a spokesperson for the German laboratory behind the first vaccine to Anti-Covid messenger RNA (mRNA) developed with Pfizer.

"The authorities will ultimately decide when an authorization will be issued", but "we are ready to deliver our vaccine from the beginning of the summer", she told AFP, while in February the CEO Ugur Sahin mentioned the deadline of April or May.

For its part, Moderna had announced in January that its own vaccine could be subject to approval by the European regulator “somewhere at summer level”.