People who have passed the covid will receive the booster dose against the infection five months after diagnosis. The Public Health Commission, where the autonomies and the Ministry of Health are represented, has agreed this Tuesday to extend the period between the disease and the third dose that, in a previous document, had scored from four weeks after diagnosis. The decision was highly questioned by virologists and immunologists, who saw the interval between the infection and the puncture as very short and warned that it could even lead to “problems in the immune system”. Now, the Commission has pointed out that, although the interval between the infection and the administration of the booster dose will be a minimum of four weeks, “it is recommended” to give it five months after diagnosis.
The Ministry of Health has justified that, unlike infections with the delta variant, the covid caused by the omicron, the dominant lineage at this time, “increases the response of memory cells to viral antigens other than protein S, which which implies an extension of immunity”. In addition, adds Health, the currently available scientific evidence indicates that coronavirus infection after completing the vaccine schedule with two doses causes “a more powerful immune response” to develop to neutralize other variants of the virus.
Those have been the arguments put forward by the Public Health Commission after their initial decision to vaccinate four weeks after diagnosis was negatively received by the experts. “After vaccination, an omicron infection is like a new dose, but more complete, because we are not only exposed to a part of the virus, as with the injection, but to all its antigens. Weeks later the body has effective antibodies. Not by giving one and another dose to infinity without spacing of time we are going to get better protection”, Marcos López Hoyos, president of the Spanish Society of Immunology, explained a few weeks ago to this newspaper.
With the flood of cases that the omicron variant has generated in the last two months and the new Commission guideline, the injection of third doses will be prolonged over time. Health and the communities have already given the green light to the reinforcement puncture to all those over 18 years of age and, once the highest risk age groups have been completed, the autonomies advance the injections for the youngest groups, such as those in their thirties and twenty-somethings . In Spain, more than 14 million doses have already been administered and 70% of those over 40 have already received it.
children with covid
The Commission has also agreed new deadlines for administering covid vaccines to children between the ages of 5 and 11 who have recently had the disease. Thus, although until now the Vaccination Strategy recommended puncturing the vaccine four weeks after the covid has passed, the Public Health commanders have agreed that, if the infection occurs before having received any puncture against the coronavirus, they will be will administer a single dose eight weeks after diagnosis. And if the disease is detected after receiving the first dose, the second will also be given two months after the detection of the disease, always maintaining the interval between the first and the second puncture of eight weeks (unlike adults, who were 21 days between injections, in children it is two months).
Children have been another of the large groups most affected by this sixth wave. The new outbreak of the virus and the rise of ómicron caught them starting vaccination, without protection or with the incomplete vaccination schedule and, with the new Commission guideline, the punctures to this group will also be extended over time. According to Health, 53% of children between 5 and 11 years have already received at least one dose.