Breaking: Situation ‘evolving rapidly’ but ATAGI keeps booster gap at five months
There will be no immediate change to Australia’s booster program, after the nation’s chief vaccine advisers acknowledged that the situation was “evolving rapidly”, but recommended that the gap between the second and third doses of COVID-19 vaccine should not be reduced.
Mounting evidence is suggesting that two doses of the Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccines are not enough to provide adequate protection against infection from or mild disease caused by the Omicron variant, and a third dose is critical to stimulate immunity against the infectious variant. The declaration by Premier Daniel Andrews – which applies from December 16 – replaces the now-expired state of emergency provisions previously used to justify public health orders such as mask mandates, travel limits, curfews and stay-at-home rules.
“The Premier was satisfied that current vaccination rates alone will not suffice to contain transmission within health system capacity, and available treatments are only partially effective in mitigating serious illness or death.” “The available therapeutic interventions of antivirals, steroids and supportive care, have been shown to be only partially effective in reducing mortality and decreasing hospital stays.”
While AstraZeneca is thought to provide some level of protection against severe illness and hospitalisation, he said emerging research suggests that it may provide far less protection against transmission of the new variant than mRNA vaccines including Pfizer. In the UK, where new cases have soared to almost 80,000 a day, a record for the pandemic, authorities have cut the time between the vaccine and booster to three months. In Denmark, the interval has been reduced to four and half months.
He said Victorians should brace for “an extremely rapid rise” of Omicron cases in the community in the coming weeks.
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