President Iván Duque announced that all adults over 50 years of age will be able to be vaccinated with a fourth anticovid dose: the decision covers 12.9 million people, according to Dane population projections for 2022.
The president also detailed that the possibility of injecting this new anticovid booster will only apply four months after the last dose of the vaccine has been given. In other words, if you are over 50 years old and received your third dose before January 7, the vaccinators already have the endorsement of the National Government to give you the next booster.
If you have started your vaccination schedule with the Janssen monodose, the first booster would be the second dose and the second booster the third.
Duque indicated that this new dose will have other particularities, since it will only be from two pharmaceutical houses, Pfizer or Moderna. Additionally, he explained that the Moderna injections may be half doses of that vaccine. This, explained the Minister of Health, Fernando Ruiz, corresponds to 50 micrograms of the content.
For his part, Carlos Trillos, a doctor and epidemiologist at the Universidad del Rosario, indicated that there is already sufficient scientific support to authorize the application of this fourth dose.
When asked why a half dose of Moderna and not Pfizer will be applied, he explained that “although they are similar vaccines, they behave differently. The molecular configuration of the (Modern) vaccine is different.”
“This is a decision that, we believe, will increase the level of immunity in Colombia,” assured Minister Ruiz, at the end of the Unified Command Post that took place on the morning of this Friday, May 6. And he insisted that “a very great effort” must be made so that adults over 50 years of age go to get vaccinated.
This will be a great challenge for the EPS and the IPS, which must ensure that the 12.9 million people authorized to take the fourth dose have access to it without major obstacles. The task is not easy: since the end of April, the Ministry of Health began to gradually dismantle the points of the National Vaccination Plan against covid.
Increasingly, people who want to apply a new dose against this disease will have to go to the points of the Expanded Immunization Plan (PAI), where the rest of the vaccines covered by the health system are applied.
In this regard, Trillos assured that it is essential to implement strategies such as induced demand and the active search for patients who have the possibility of applying new anticovid vaccines.
The epidemiologist pointed out that, for example, citizens can be contacted through simple and massive channels such as text messages or WhatsApp.
Finally the goal was met
Duque also reported that the country has officially vaccinated seven out of ten inhabitants with its full anticovid schemes. In other words, the health system achieved the goal that it set with the National Vaccination Plan against the coronavirus.
At first, the Government’s objective was to reach this percentage of vaccinated before the end of 2021, but the appearance of variants of the coronavirus and the need to apply reinforcements put the 70% threshold in the background.
The latest data also shows that eight out of ten Colombians (83%) have already taken at least one anticovid dose. With the reinforcements –or third doses– 11,865,246 people have been covered, which is equivalent to two out of every ten Colombians (22.9%).
To date, the only ones authorized to apply a fourth dose were patients with diseases that seriously affect their immune system or those who have recently undergone transplants. For this reason, the number of people who have already applied this new reinforcement is still very low: according to the records of the Ministry of Health, there are about 19,021 patients.
These data were given just the same day that the Government delivered the last daily vaccination report. From now on, these indicators will only be delivered once a week.
Colombia, in addition, is going through its first respiratory peak: the Ministry of Health requested that vaccination against influenza be also reinforced and that biosecurity measures be maintained against other Acute Respiratory Infections (ARI).
