The US, the UK and other major economies could be on the brink of over-vaccinating people in the fight against Covid, experts say.
Israeli officials have already announced their intentions to embark on dishing out another round of booster jabs, meaning both the US and UK will eventually face pressure to follow suit even though both nations have insisted there are no plans to administer fourth doses yet.
But scientists argue that rolling out vaccines every three-to-four months simply isn't 'doable' and may not even be necessary because of Omicron, which some believe will speed up the process of endemicity and consign days of sky-high hospitalization and death figures to history.
And they called for more data on dosing gaps between boosters before pressing ahead with plans to administer fourth jabs.
Some experts claim the benefits of extra jabs are minimal because their primary purpose - preventing deaths and hospitalizations - has barely waned after a year and several Covid variants, effectively meaning boosters are adding to an already high base level immunity.
Professor Ian Jones, a virologist at the University of Reading, said descriptions of Omicron being a 'natural vaccine' were right.
The logic behind the argument is that as Omicron is highly transmissible but milder than other variants, it can give an immunity boost without causing as much serious illness, with some data suggesting a combination of infection than vaccination providing the best type of immunity in the long-run.
On Thursday, the United States smashed another global COVID infection record when 647,067 new cases were reported, up 26 percent from the day before, when 512,533 new cases were reported, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
The US, the UK and other major economies could be on the brink of over-vaccinating people in the fight against Covid, experts say
by Carlton Kean (2022-03-21)
The US, the UK and other major economies could be on the brink of over-vaccinating people in the fight against Covid, experts say.
Israeli officials have already announced their intentions to embark on dishing out another round of booster jabs, meaning both the US and UK will eventually face pressure to follow suit even though both nations have insisted there are no plans to administer fourth doses yet.
But scientists argue that rolling out vaccines every three-to-four months simply isn't 'doable' and may not even be necessary because of Omicron, which some believe will speed up the process of endemicity and consign days of sky-high hospitalization and death figures to history.
And they called for more data on dosing gaps between boosters before pressing ahead with plans to administer fourth jabs.
Some experts claim the benefits of extra jabs are minimal because their primary purpose - preventing deaths and hospitalizations - has barely waned after a year and several Covid variants, effectively meaning boosters are adding to an already high base level immunity.
Professor Ian Jones, a virologist at the University of Reading, said descriptions of Omicron being a 'natural vaccine' were right.
The logic behind the argument is that as Omicron is highly transmissible but milder than other variants, it can give an immunity boost without causing as much serious illness, with some data suggesting a combination of infection than vaccination providing the best type of immunity in the long-run.
On Thursday, the United States smashed another global COVID infection record when 647,067 new cases were reported, up 26 percent from the day before, when 512,533 new cases were reported, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
In total, reports, the United States recorded 2.49 million cases within the past week, outpacing the country's previous record of 1.7 million new cases recorded in the one-week period from January 3 through January 9.
Experts say the number of cases are rising so rapidly due to the spread of the highly-contagious Omicron variant, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says accounts for anywhere from 40 to 70 per cent of the new cases in the US.A UK-based expert says the variant could spread with just a 'whiff of infected breath.'At the same time, however, the number of daily deaths have halved from 2,800 to 1,400 between Wednesday and Thursday. The drop comes after multiple studies showed that Omicron was likely to cause up to 80 per cent fewer hospitalizations than Delta, although scientists have cautioned that more data is needed, and say the sheer number of infections caused by the new variant could ultimately cause an additional spike in serious illness and death. more videos The graph shows the countries who have given the highest total number of vaccine doses and boosters per 100 population. It demonstrates how a number of nations are now, on average exceeding two doses per person. The UK is a mid tier performer in the lower cohort of the top 20 performers while the US doesn't even manage to make the cut While only a mid-performer in the top 20 nations for vaccine doses per 100 people the UK is a top performer when it comes to comparing nations such as the US, Canada, Australia and Israel This map shows the number of vaccines administered per 100 people, Africa, where Omicron was first identified and is believed to have emerged, has, as a continent, among the lowest number of vaccinated people in proportion to its population in the worldFuture variants 'may be even more mild', Professor Jones told MailOnline, adding that the need for healthy adults to get top-up jabs could soon recede.
Instead of doling out jabs every few months, he said annual boosters for the vulnerable ahead of the winter would be 'more feasible'. Professor Lawrence Young, a virologist from Warwick University, insisted vaccines should protect against severe illness for much longer than they do against getting infected or becoming ill, suggesting that an annual booster for the elderly and vulnerable groups will be enough to thwart off Covid in the coming years.Dr Simon Clarke, a microbiologist at the University of Reading, admitted he 'can't see' governments pushign out Covid vaccines every three months for much longer.
He said: after two-and-a-half months immunity starts to wane, that doesn't mean it drops below being extremely effective.'But he told MailOnline that the only way to measure the long-term effectiveness of the boosters was to wait and see.
'We can only get that long term data over the long term, there's no crystal ball with this. We just don't know what the optimum strategy is,' he said. Other epidemiologists have said repeated and multiple outbreaks Covid each year might necessitate boosters every four to six months, which they branded a 'daunting prospect'. But even though data shows vaccines are less effective against Omicron, they are nowhere near redundant. Real-world data shows efficacy levels of the booster vaccine at stopping people getting symptoms plummet to around 40 per cent after just 10 weeks. But two jabs still drastically cut the risk of hospitalization and death, even against Omicron, as the body's immune system still retains some ability to help fight off virus even after some waning immunity.
A third dose will bolster that protection even further, experts insist.It means a fourth dose may not be necessary yet for the entirety of the UK and could see ministers only advised to dish out extra doses to the elderly and immunocompromised in the coming months.For this reason some experts have called for caution about dishing out another round of vaccines so quickly. RELATED ARTICLES
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One of the UK Government's own advisers warned it would be impossible to 'defeat' Covid with vaccines if everyone needed a top-up every three months. It would see the UK's national Health Service have to dish out the equivalent of up to 50million jabs every 90 days, or around 550,000 every day. This would put the cost of an annual vaccination drive in the region of £4billion (around $5.4billion) , based on one jab being priced at around £20 ($27) per dose — similar to Pfizer. But government ministers may sign off on plans to dish out universal Covid jabs — which experts hope will offer better protection and hold up against variants that emerge in the future — but they aren't expected for another 18 months, England chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty told MPs earlier this month.Vaccine makers have been quietly working on as polyvalent Covid jabs but they are all in early development and way off clinical trials. Israel has already approved the use of fourth doses of Covid vaccines to vulnerable people, such as those with weakened immune systems, over fears that their immunity may already be fading .Currently, the US has not indicated any plans regarding additional boosters, with health officials saying more data is needed on the protection improvement potentially offered by a fourth dose. Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said last week that it was too 'premature' to be talking about a fourth dose. 'One of the things that we're going to be following very carefully is what the durability of the protection is following the third dose of an mRNA vaccine,' he said.'If the protection is much more durable than the two-dose, non-boosted group, then we may go a significant period of time without requiring a fourth dose.'So, I do think it's premature, at least on the part of the US, to be talking about a fourth dose.'UK experts have also urged caution over offering fourth jabs, saying more data is needed on the long term protection offered by the booster. The rollout of a second set of boosters is being examined by experts on the UK's Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI). Professor Anthony Harnden, deputy chair of the JCVI, said: 'We need to see more data.
We are in different circumstances to Israel and we need to see more data on waning immunity and vaccine effectiveness against hospitalization.' Professor Jones said: 'The vaccine response clearly wanes but it is not clear if the boosted response will wane in the same way or at the same rate.' Israel has already started rolling out fourth doses of Covid vaccines to vulnerable people, the nation has been seen by many as a pioneer in vaccine policy with other nations, such as the UK, later following many of its policies After a rocky start the Covid booster campaign has accelerated with over 30million people boosted according to the latest data, whether the public have appetite for further boosters is unclear<div class="art-ins mol-factbox news halfRHS" data-version="2" id="mol-50d32160-698a-11ec-ae85-c90c314810f8" website warn dishing out fourth jabs in spring may be pointless