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Date Published: 20/01/2022

ARCHIVED - Spain rules out booster vaccine for children under 18

ARCHIVED ARTICLE

Health authorities in Spain will focus on encouraging the 3.1 million unvaccinated to get the jab

<span style='color:#780948'>ARCHIVED</span> - Spain rules out booster vaccine for children under 18

Last week Spain announced that it would respond to a request by the Public Health Commission and begin offering booster Covid jabs to everyone over the age of 18, but the latest Vaccine Report has ruled out extending the third dose to people under the age of 18, at least for now.

Instead, the Ministry of Health plans to redouble its efforts to convince the remaining 3.1 million unvaccinated citizens to get the vaccine, a daunting task which thus far has had limited success. In addition, the Spanish government will continue to vaccinate children aged between 5 and 11, another aspect of the campaign which has slowed down considerably in recent weeks.

Spain has also agreed to follow the guidelines of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and only offer a fourth dose to people with serious illnesses, who have undergone a transplant or cancer treatment and those who are generally immunosupressed. Outside of these exceptions, the EMA sees no benefit in adding an extra dose for the rest of the population but the experts have acknowledged that from now on, it is likely that annual vaccination campaigns will have to be carried out, similar to what is done for the common flu.

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While 90.6% of the population over the age of 12 are now double jabbed and almost 17 million people over 40 have had a booster, the Ministry is continuing to push more people to get the third jab, since “we know the importance of the vaccine and that after a while, they lose effectiveness and a booster dose is necessary.”

To underscore this point, the Interterritorial Health Council revealed on Wednesday January 19 that recent data show the neutralising antibodies against both Delta and Omicron rise significantly after a third vaccine, 17 times in the case of the former and 10 times in the latter.

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