Booster vaccination is primarily recommended for people over the age of 65 and for health care workers. High-risk patients and those vaccinated with AstraZeneca or Johnson & Johnson are also encouraged to receive the booster. Everyone else 16 and older should wait nine to 12 months after basic immunization, Maria Paulke-Korinek of the Health Ministry told ORF radio.
“The data are increasingly indicating that it really should be the case, even with the Covid 19 vaccines, that we simply need those three doses. And when the immune system has seen these three doses, so to speak, that then really an optimal, good, broad, very, very high protection, very, very highly expressed, against Covid-19 prevails,” explained Paulke-Korinek, head of the Department of Immunization. Convalescents who have received only one vaccination are seen as fully vaccinated; they must receive a single booster.
Booster vaccination is recommended
The National Immunization Panel currently recommends that boosters be given with the Biontech/Pfizer vaccine. “And this is simply because there is now approval for the third dose here on the part of the European Medicines Agency (EMA, note). As soon as other products, such as Moderna, are also approved for the third dose, both vaccines will of course be recommended,” Paulke-Korinek stressed in the Ö1 “Mittagsjournal”. The EMA’s decision was announced for Oct. 25.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health updated its information for health workers on the Corona vaccine. It now states that antibody testing prior to Covid 19 vaccinations to decide whether vaccination is necessary is “neither appropriate, nor recommended, according to recommendations of the National Immunization Panel.”
It said it is “not known what level of antibody/titer is needed to ensure protection against Covid-19 (exception: immunosuppressed individuals to determine if vaccinations against COVID-19 have been responded to).”
“If, based on the detection of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, vaccination against Covid-19 is wrongly advised against, contrary to medical recommendations, and the person advised against vaccination becomes ill with Covid-19, this may also have consequences under liability law, because it is clearly contrary to the explicit medical recommendation,” a letter to provincial vaccination coordinators, provincial health councils and the medical association also said.
- source: k.at/picture:pixabay.com
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