UK vaccine panel says no immediate need for second boosters for elderly

The UK’s vaccine advisory panel on Friday said there was “no immediate need” for a second booster shot for elderly vulnerable groups, citing new evidence that vaccine protection against severe disease from the Omicron coronavirus variant is sustained for at least three months.

Early data from the UK Health Security Agency, released on Friday, showed that while vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic infection from Omicron falls from about 70 per cent for the over-65s two to four weeks after the shot is administered to just 30 per cent three months on, efficacy against severe disease holds steady at roughly 90 per cent.

“The current data show the booster dose is continuing to provide high levels of protection against severe disease, even for the most vulnerable older age groups,” said Prof Wei Shen Lim, Covid-19 chair on the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation. “For this reason the committee has concluded there is no immediate need to introduce a second booster dose, though this will continue to be reviewed.”

This week, Israel became the first country to offer a fourth dose of the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine to a wide swath of the population, rolling the jab out to the over-60s, medical workers and people with weakened immune systems amid spiking case numbers due to Omicron.

A study on 150 Israeli healthcare workers found a fivefold jump in antibody levels after a fourth jab.

Some 500,000 immunocompromised people in the UK have been eligible for a fourth dose three months after their third jab since late November.

The European Medicines Agency signalled late last year that it was reviewing whether fourth doses were needed for a subset of at-risk populations, such as those who are immunocompromised.

The UK has nearly 150m additional vaccines under order from Pfizer and Moderna, the current linchpins of its booster rollout, which are set to arrive throughout 2022 and 2023.

More than 35m third doses have been administered across the UK since the booster drive began in September but, despite high vaccination coverage, Omicron has pushed infection rates to record highs, with one in 15 people in England being infected with Covid-19 in the week ending December 31, according to the Office for National Statistics.

This week, Prof Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group that created the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab, cast doubt on the need for boosters in the long term.

“It really is not affordable, sustainable or probably even needed to vaccinate everyone on the planet every four to six months,” said Pollard, speaking to the BBC’s Today programme.

“We haven’t even managed to vaccinate everyone in Africa with one dose so we’re certainly not going to get to a point where fourth doses for everyone is manageable.”

“We may well need to have boosters for the vulnerable in the population, but I think it’s highly unlikely that we’ll have programmes going forwards regularly of boosting everyone over the age of 12,” he added.