German vaccine board recommends second Covid booster for some groups

Berlin (dpa) – Germany’s official vaccination body has recommended giving a second Covid-19 booster shot to particularly at-risk groups.

The Standing Committee on Vaccination, or STIKO, is an independent panel of experts that advises the government during the pandemic.

On Thursday, it said that people over 70 years of age, people in care facilities, people with immunodeficiency and employees in medical and care facilities should all receive a second booster dose of an mRNA vaccine, such as the Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna drugs.

A draft resolution has been sent to other health experts and the federal states for approval, so changes to the plan are still possible.

Currently, the STIKO is calling for people at risk on health grounds to get their second booster three months at the earliest after the first, while medical and care staff at risk due to exposure should receive the second booster after six months at the earliest.

The committee pointed to current data showing that protection against infection with the Omicron coronavirus variant diminishes within a few months after the first booster vaccination.

This is a particular risk for people over 70 or those with immunodeficiency, because they are more likely to fall seriously ill with Covid-19.

However, people who have had a coronavirus infection since their first booster should not receive another, under the board’s recommendation.

The STIKO also noted that “the data on the effectiveness and safety of a second booster vaccination is still limited.”

Israel is already far into its drive to get a second booster jab into people’s arms.

The Israeli Health Ministry has said that protection against infection has been shown to be twice as good as after the third vaccination. Protection against severe disease is even said to be three to five times as high.

However, a study from the country recently found that the second booster does not provide much additional protection against Omicron.

Gili Regev-Yochay, director of the infectious disease unit at Tel Aviv’s Sheba Medical Center, who led the research, said last month that breakthrough infections were still being observed in people who had been vaccinated four times.

On Thursday, Germany’s STIKO also recommended rolling out a new Covid-19 vaccine manufactured by US company Novavax for people aged 18 and over. This follows an approval by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in December.

In contrast to the four other vaccines already approved in Germany, Novavax is a protein-based vaccine. It contains tiny particles consisting of a laboratory-produced version of the spike protein of Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes the Covid-19 disease.