WHO backs extra Covid jab for people with weak immune systems

GENEVA: The World Health Organisation’s vaccine advisers on Monday recommended people with weakened immune systems should be offered an additional dose of all WHO-approved Covid-19 vaccines.

The UN health agency’s experts also said over-60s fully immunised with China’s Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines should be offered an additional third Covid-19 vaccine dose. The Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunisation (SAGE) stressed it was not recommending an additional booster dose for the population at large, which is already being rolled out in some countries.

The WHO wants a moratorium on booster doses for the general population until the end of the year to prioritise first doses in the dozens of nations starved of vaccines. SAGE said it would review the issue of general booster doses on November 11.

Several Covid-19 vaccines have been given WHO approval for emergency use during the pandemic: Pfizer-BioNTech, Janssen, Moderna, Sinopharm, Sinovac and AstraZeneca. The WHO is also on the verge of deciding whether to give emergency use listing (EUL) to India’s Bharat Biotech jab.

SAGE held a four-day meeting last week to review the latest information and data on a range of vaccines for Covid-19 and other diseases. "SAGE recommended that moderately and severely immunocompromised persons should be offered an additional dose of all WHO EUL Covid-19 vaccines as part of an extended primary series," the group said.

"These individuals are less likely to respond adequately to vaccination following a standard primary vaccine series and are at high risk of severe Covid-19 disease." Kate O’Brien, the WHO’s vaccines chief, said the extra dose should be considered as part of the normal Covid-19 immunisation course for people with weaker immune systems, to be administered after a wait of one to three months.

It should bring their level of protection up to that demonstrated to prevent against severe disease, hospitalisation and death in clinical trials -- from which people with immunocompromised conditions were excluded.

SAGE also said that for people fully immunised with Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines -- both two-dose regimens -- an additional third shot of the same jab "should be offered to persons aged 60 and above".

A different vaccine "may also be considered based on vaccine supply and access considerations". SAGE added that when implementing this recommendation, countries should initially aim at maximising two-dose coverage in that population, and thereafter administer the third dose, starting in the oldest age groups.

The Sinopharm jab is used in 69 countries, while Sinovac has been rolled out in 36, according to an AFP count. Algeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Pakistan and the Philippines are among the countries using both jabs, besides China. Sinopharm is also used in Bangladesh, Hungary, Iran, Kenya, Nigeria, Peru, Sri Lanka and the United Arab Emirates.

Sinovac is used by Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Singapore, Turkey and the Ukraine.Meanwhile, vaccination reduces the risk of dying or being hospitalised with Covid-19 by 90%, a French study of 22.6 million people over the age of 50 has found.The research published on Monday also found that vaccines appear to protect against the worst effects of the most prevalent virus strain, the Delta variant.

“This means that those who are vaccinated are nine times less at risk of being hospitalised or dying from Covid-19 than those who have not been vaccinated,” the epidemiologist Mahmoud Zureik, who oversaw the research, told Agence France-Presse.

The study – the largest of its kind so far – was carried out by Epi-Phare a scientific group set up by France’s health system, its national health insurance fund, l’Assurance Maladie (CNAM), and the country’s ANSM medicines agency.

Researchers compared 11.3 million vaccinated over-50s with the same number of unvaccinated from the same age group between 27 December 2020, when vaccinations began in France, and 20 July this year.

They found “a reduction in the risk of hospitalisation superior to 90%” from the 14th day after the second dose and a similar reduction in the number of deaths from Covid-19. Similar findings have previously been published in Israel, the UK and the US. The vaccines’ effectiveness in combatting the most serious symptoms of Covid did not diminish during the five-month period of the study, they said. The results were the same no matter whether the patient was given the Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna or Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine.