The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) have updated public health recommendations on the use of additional booster doses of COVID-19 vaccines this summer and in the upcoming autumn and winter seasons.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) are recommending that second booster doses of COVID-19 vaccines be considered for people between 60 and 79 years old and people with medical conditions putting them at high risk of severe disease.
New SARS-CoV-2 variants of interest and concern have continued to emerge in the first few months of 2022 and monitoring their circulation in all countries through genomic surveillance remains important.
A new online modelling hub launched today, the European COVID-19 Scenario Hub, will present modelling projections on how the COVID-19 pandemic may evolve in terms of cases, hospitalisations and deaths.
A continuous high incidence or a large surge in cases in the early summer would imply a large benefit from an early second booster roll-out but optimal timing will largely depend on trends in infections ECDC says in the latest technical report on a second mRNA COVID-19 vaccine booster dose.
Since the onset of Russia’s aggression towards Ukraine on 24 February 2022, and as of 11 April 2022, more than 4 million Ukrainian people have fled to Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and the Republic of Moldova.
EMA and ECDC have reviewed currently available studies and epidemiological data to provide a common position for EU/EEA countries on the current need and potential benefit of a fourth dose (second booster dose) of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.
ECDC and EMA’s COVID-19 task force (ETF) have concluded that it is too early to consider using a fourth dose of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines (Pfizer’s Comirnaty and Moderna’s Spikevax) in the general population.