(Photo credit: NARA & DVIDS CC)
The Government has announced that it will be rolling out a fourth booster COVID-19 vaccine for all over-50s and NHS workers in the coming months. The announcement follows advice from the scientific advisers on the independent Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), who have recommended an extra dose be offered in the autumn months.
The aim is to increase immunity in this age group before the expected rise in Covid cases over the winter months.
In addition, flu vaccines will also be offered free of charge to the over 50s, primary school children and secondary school pupils in years 7, 8 and 9, as well as people in clinically at-risk groups, unpaid carers, and household contacts of those who are immunosuppressed. The aim is to also boost protection from flu during the winter flu season and reduce the severity of the disease and its burden on the NHS.
Whether the COVID booster vaccines will be the same ones as previously used or newer updated vaccines targeted more towards the currently circulating Omicron variants BA.4 and BA.5 is unclear.
In the US, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has advised vaccine makers to update COVID booster shots to target the new forms of the Omicron variant, and the vaccine manufacturers are developing new vaccines, but whether these will be ready for the autumn booster programme is unclear.
The current vaccines were developed to target the original COVID virus, and whilst they do provide protection from COVID-19, their effectiveness does appear to wane overtime – hence the call for another booster programme for over-50s. Each new variant of Omicron has been more contagious than its predecessor, which has led to calls for the vaccines to be updated.
Both Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech are developing new vaccines but generating the millions of doses needed for mass vaccination campaigns will take time.
The original vaccines have worked well to reduce disease severity and vaccine makers will not want to lose that. Also, with the potential for new variants to emerge there is always the risk of developing vaccines for the Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 variants only to find that a new variant has emerged that is fast becoming the dominant variant, surpassing BA.4 and BA.5.
What we do know is that immunity from the Omicron variants seems to reduce over time and many people are experiencing re-infections with COVID.
COVID numbers remain high in the UK, across Europe and in the US, and a rise in cases in autumn and winter is expected as respiratory diseases generally tend to peak in winters such as flu and seasonal colds. Boosting immunity in older age groups and the vulnerable, though a fourth covid booster jab and free flu vaccines will hopefully reduce the severity of disease and keep hospitalisations down.
Whether new vaccines will be available for this is uncertain at this point. Whether further COVID boosters will be needed over the next 12 months is also unclear. What is clear is that we are still finding our way through ‘living with covid’.
Rachel Kayani
