The third dose of Astrazeneca for over 18. In autumn, a new vaccination campaign in autumn
The World Health Organization estimates that nearly 15 million people have been killed by the coronavirus or its impact on health systems overwhelmed by the pandemic in the past two years, more than double the official death toll of 6 million. Most of the deaths occurred in Southeast Asia, Europe and the Americas. In a report released today, the director of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, stressed that the figure “sobering” and should push countries to invest more in their abilities to deal with future health emergencies. Scientists commissioned by WHO to calculate the actual number of deaths from Covid_19 between January 2020 and the end of last year estimated that there were between 13.3 million and 16.6 million deaths caused directly by the coronavirus or in some way. attributed to the impact of the pandemic on health systems, such as people with cancer who were unable to seek treatment because hospitals were full of Covid patients. The figures are based on data reported by country and statistical models.
Meanwhile, there seems to be a “fairly high probability of seeing the first anti-Covid vaccine adapted to variants approved by September at the EU level. This was stated by the head of the EMA vaccine task force Marco Cavaleri in a virtual conference with journalists. «It is not a mystery», added Cavaleri «that those further ahead at the moment are the mRna vaccines.
“Ema and the other international regulators – specified Cavaleri – will give approval only to products that demonstrate their safety and their superiority compared to those currently in use in countering Omicron” and the more recent variants of the virus that cause Covid. “Our priority is to ensure the approval of adapted vaccines by September at the latest, so that we can start the vaccination campaign in the EU in the autumn.”
Meanwhile, the third Astrazeneca dose for the over 18. “We have begun to evaluate an application for a booster dose AstraZeneca to people over 18 years of age,” announced Cavaleri. As for the fourth administration, the expert confirmed that “it is still too early to consider the use of a fourth dose of mRna vaccines in the general population”. However, “people over the age of 80 – he specified – could benefit from a second recall, given the higher risk for them of contracting severe forms of Covid-19”.
Currently, EMA has also begun examining Moderna’s application for authorization to extend the use of its anti-Covid vaccine, Spikevax, to children between the ages of 6 months and 5 years. Cavaleri always said this: “We have just begun the evaluation of Moderna’s application, it is the first for this age group”.
