Germans will need a fourth dose of the vaccine, says specialist

The president of the German Association of General Practitioners, Ulrich Wijldt, said: Germany You may have to organize a campaign Vaccination against COVID-19 to Fourth booster Next year, with the aim of controlling the coronavirus pandemic in the country.

In an interview published by the newspaper this Saturday 11 pictureAccording to the expert, booster doses will likely be needed from mid-2022.

The country’s vaccination campaign has gradually accelerated since it was restarted to give booster doses. The fourth wave of COVID-19 has dramatically increased the infection rate, which has led to a consecutive rise in infection statistics.

The appearance of the variable omicron, already located in Germany, contributed to the further complexity of the picture. “We expect this boom will slowly become dominant by the beginning of next year,” Gernot Marx, president of the German Society of Intensive Care Medicine (DIVI), said in an interview with the Passauer New Press.

Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its partner BioNTech said Wednesday that results from a preliminary study of the effectiveness of their vaccine against omicron showed that a third dose of the vaccine provides broad protection against the strain.

Fourth dose with influenza vaccine

According to data released Friday by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the German agency for disease prevention and control, about 1.1 million Germans have received their third vaccine against COVID-19 since the middle of last year. Thus, about 20% of German adults are currently fully immunized with a booster dose.

German public health officials hope this booster campaign will accelerate as winter approaches, so that further restrictions and lockdown measures can be avoided.

Wegeldt told Bild newspaper that he hopes to start a third vaccination campaign from September next year “in conjunction with the flu shot” so that protection against coronavirus can be made a routine medical issue.