Health Council: Boosting young people now has no added value | Inland

The council writes this in an advice published this morning to Minister Kuipers of Public Health. The Health Council leaves one question open: what does the Netherlands do with young people who need a booster shot to take their family on holiday to Austria or Italy, for example? That falls ‘outside the mandate’, the council writes. The government must therefore make its own choice. In any case, the cabinet has yet to announce whether the Health Council’s advice will be adopted.

At the moment young people cannot be boosted yet. The advice of the Health Council was therefore eagerly awaited by some. Spring break starts in the north of the country on February 19. Teenagers going to Austria to ski may have had their last vaccination up to seven months ago.

“Of course we find it annoying when teenagers can’t go on holiday with their parents,” says Marianne Geleijnse, vice-chairman of the Health Council. “A booster may also be necessary for restaurants in Germany. But a vaccination is a medical intervention, which is why we base our advice on medical grounds. And we think the health benefit of boosters for young people is too small.”

The Health Council writes that an infection with the omikron variant of the coronavirus, which is now dominant, is generally mild in teenagers who have already been fully vaccinated. The chance of hospitalization is ‘minimal’. “Booster vaccination in 12 to 17-year-olds provides only very limited health benefits, even for adolescents who fall under a high-risk group.”

The Health Council also points out that the European medicine agency EMA has not yet weighed the benefits against the risks for a booster shot in young people. As a result, an extra shot in this group would now be ‘off label‘ are. This means that the vaccine is not officially registered for this group. Geleijnse emphasizes that boosting for adults is still useful.

During the first round of vaccinations, last summer, teenagers were included. One of the reasons was that it would help to slow down the spread of the virus and thus prevent the most severe measures. The idea was that this provided the young people with ‘indirect health benefits’ at the time. “In the current situation, in which many restrictive measures have been released and the omikron variant is dominant, booster vaccination no longer offers relevant indirect health benefits for this group. The council also does not expect a significant effect on the spread of the virus among the population.”

The previous Minister of Health, Hugo de Jonge, had asked for the advice at the end of December. In the current wave, many young people have tested positive. The vaccines that have been approved so far for booster shots have that recognition only for adults. No booster vaccines for minors have yet been approved in the Netherlands. De Jonge therefore also asked the Health Council whether boosting young people could and should already be started without such approval, or whether it would be better to wait until a vaccine has been approved for young people.

The World Health Organization (WHO) stated in mid-January that there is currently no evidence that healthy children and adolescents need a booster against the corona virus. More research is needed to determine who benefits from a booster dose, according to WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan. Israel is already offering teenagers as young as 12 an extra shot to boost the immune system, especially now that the more contagious omikron variant continues to advance. It has also been approved in the United States, Germany and Hungary, among others.

The WHO believes that boosters should be primarily intended for the most vulnerable people, such as the elderly, people with weakened immune systems and healthcare personnel. The organization previously criticized the general administration of a booster in richer countries, while in many poor countries the population has not even received a first shot.

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