That is what the Health Council stated in an advisory report issued on Friday morning. As far as the advisory council is concerned, nursing home residents, people with a serious immune disorder and people with Down syndrome are also eligible for the extra shot. The Health Council considers an injection unnecessary for the general population, if only because the epidemic is decreasing and omikron makes it less ill.
The Health Council thus follows the line of, among others, Germany, Denmark and Sweden: an extra boost of the immune system for the most vulnerable citizens. Certainly now that the measures are being relaxed while omikron is still circulating, there is ‘no alternative available in the short term to offer very vulnerable groups the necessary protection’, the Council writes.
Reinforced vanguard
At the same time, the experts acknowledge that it is not yet known exactly what a fourth injection provides for extra protection. Broadly speaking, an extra booster will strengthen the ‘vanguard’ of antibodies against the virus in the blood. But the numbers associated with this are less clear. In Israel, the number of hospital patients was halved in the extra-injected group, but that was only based on two weeks of research.
Six months later, those who have been fully vaccinated are only about 10 percent protected against minor illness and 25 percent against hospitalization with the omikron variant. The booster shot temporarily boosts this to around 70 percent protection against minor illness and 90 percent protection against hospitalization. According to RIVM calculations, the booster shot has therefore prevented 1,620 hospital admissions in our country.
Not finished yet
But after two or three months, the protection of the booster shot also collapses. Because the body lowers its highest state of alert and clears the antibodies, the omikron virus gets another chance. After three months, boosters are ‘only’ 25 to 40 percent protected against mild illness and, more than two months after the booster, 85 percent against hospitalization.
It is not yet entirely certain whether the current advice is enough. The Health Council advises the minister to ‘remain alert to an unforeseen course of the infection wave’. It is conceivable, for example, that the omikron variant will again be followed by a more sickening version of the corona virus. In the second half of March, the Health Council wants to build in a ‘weighing moment’ to check whether other groups under 70 still need to be tested.