Adult vaccinated against Covid is exempt from the dose in 2024 – 10/31/2023 – Health

Healthy adults with a complete vaccination schedule against Covid-19 will not need to receive a new dose in 2024.

According to the Ministry of Health, there is no scientific proof that this population needs to be immunized next year. The body, which monitors the epidemiological scenario of Covid-19 through a technical group recently created for this purpose, admits that the ministry’s recommendation may change depending on the behavior of the virus.

The main focus of the disease in the world, according to the Secretary of Health and Environmental Surveillance of the Ministry of Health, Ethel Maciel, is the reduction in severity, hospitalization and deaths.

The report questioned the Ministry of Health about the possibility of offering the Covid-19 vaccine to everyone in 2024, but received no response until the publication of this report.

This Tuesday morning (31), Maciel announced the inclusion of the Covid-19 vaccine in the National Vaccination Calendar for children aged 6 months to 4 years and 11 months and other priority groups. The measure will come into effect in 2024.

What the experts say

Evaldo Stanislau de Araújo, infectious disease specialist at Hospital das Clínicas de São Paulo, agrees with the statement if the ministry is referring to the currently available vaccine. In the case of an update to the vaccine, as occurred in the United States, the entire population must be revaccinated.

“If the Ministry of Health refers to the old vaccines, which Brazil has today, it doesn’t make sense to reinforce anything else with the same. The majority of the population has hybrid immunity — acquired both from the vaccines taken and from the infections that existed. But We don’t know exactly how long this hybrid immunity will last, and the virus is undergoing a continuous mutation process”, says Araújo

“This current virus mutated in an extremely different environment from the first variants, which derived from the original virus. The current variants were selected in the scenario we have. First, immunity after infection; second, vaccine immunity; third, exposure to antiviral. The fact is that the new variants are very different from the viruses we had”, he explains.

The vaccines currently available in the country, according to the HC infectious disease specialist, do not offer coverage for the BA.2.86 variants — detected in several countries — and the EG.5 — with cases in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.

Renato Kfouri, vice-president of SBIm (Brazilian Society of Immunizations), says that it is a public health strategy, as is the case with immunization against the influenza virus.

“What we do with the flu in terms of public health is not to vaccinate the entire population. That was the strategy in the pandemic. Now, you vaccinate groups at greater risk of worsening the disease, hospitalization and deaths”, comments Kfouri.

“No country in the world, I believe, will continue with what I call universal vaccination. Neither the WHO recommends it nor does Brazil require it. I think it is absolutely correct not to vaccinate the entire population, in terms of public health”, he reinforces.

Regarding children’s immunization, Kfouri makes an observation. For the specialist, this group should not be vaccinated in a campaign strategy, but rather routinely, according to age, to be defined within the calendar scheme — it was the strategy discussed and approved by the technical chamber, according to him.

“Today Covid is much milder, because people have already received two, three, four doses of vaccine, and have already had this disease once, twice, three times. It is only this population immunity that makes the disease, today, generally, more mild, with less risk of complications than in the past.

“Children who are being born, turning six months, a year old, have never seen the vaccine or the virus. They were born at a time when the pandemic was already under control. The disease is migrating, today, to groups that are virgin to the virus.”

“Today, the incidence, if we look at cases of hospitalization for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome due to Covid, per 100 thousand inhabitants, that is, the incidence of hospitalization, for children, is on par with those over 80 years of age. So, the group The person most hospitalized today is children under two years of age”, concludes Kfouri.