After recommending for a while to wait 6 months after the last injection before getting the 3rd dose, this Thursday December 9, 2021, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) announced booster shots can eventually be given in a “safe and effective” way only three months after the last injection.
“The data currently available support safe and effective administration of a booster as early as three months from completion of the primary vaccination, should such a short interval be desirable from a public health perspective”, EMA vaccine strategy chief Marco Cavaleri said.
As for the Omicron variant worrying the world’s health authorities and the population, Cavaleri said it was “It's too early to say whether the vaccine composition will need to be changed. At this stage we do not have enough data on the impact of this variant on the effectiveness of the approved vaccines but we are continuously scanning the horizon to gather evidence in this regard”. The question is to know if the current vaccines can stop the spread of this new variant.
He also said companies marketing Covid-19 vaccines are expected to submit the results of their laboratory tests to find out the level of neutralization for Omicron, adding new vaccines working against Omicron could be approved within three to four months if need be.
Still about Omicron, the European Medicines Agency reports: “Cases appear to be mostly mild, however we need to gather more evidence to determine whether the spectrum of disease severity caused by omicron is different (to) that of all the variants that have been circulating so far. Early data suggest omicron is more infectious than Delta, but it was not year clear whether it would replace the older dominant strain”.
He also stressed that there were better means of prevention and treatment available than last winter
