Covid, Sergio Abrignani: “Fourth dose for everyone makes no sense. Extending the fourth dose to the rest of the population would make a very emotional and unscientific sense.”
“The Wuhan strain, which arrived in Lombardy in January-February 2020, was relatively not very infectious. It had an R0 of 2.5, meaning that one infected person could in turn infect two and a half people. With the Alfa variant, the number rose to 4. With the Omicron2 variant, R0 is around 13-15. This means that at the beginning of the pandemic, the number of infected people in the peak period was 30-40 thousand per day, with Omicron we reached more than 200 thousand and it was certainly an underestimated number. In the first twenty months of the pandemic, 8-10 percent of Lombard citizens were probably infected. With the arrival of Omicron, in the last four months alone, it is likely that at least a quarter of Lombardy citizens were infected”.
Thus, to Fanpage.it, Sergio Abrignani, immunologist at the University of Milan. And on the fourth dose of the vaccine he underlines: “As we know from other vaccines against infectious diseases (for example hepatitis B), repeated vaccinations more than the classic three-dose schedule can be useful for the immunocompromised and the frail (over 80 and residents of nursing homes). For all other cases, the fourth dose does not bring any significant advantage in terms of protection from severe disease. The data available today indicate that in non-frail subjects, therefore for the vast majority of Italians, the three doses of the anti-COVID vaccine are sufficient and that extending the fourth dose to the rest of the population would make very emotional and unscientific sense. Let me also say that rather than thinking about the fourth dose, we should think about vaccinating with the third dose those millions of Italians who have received only two doses and who perhaps do not know that 5-6 months after the second dose, protection from severe disease drops to 60-70 percent”.
And he adds: “Next fall the virus will still be circulating, this is very, very likely. However, the vast majority of Italians are vaccinated. However, those over 50 who are not vaccinated and those over 80 who are vaccinated with multiple borbidities remain at high risk of hospitalization. Of those who end up in intensive care, the majority are not vaccinated, of those who die, the majority are not vaccinated or have been vaccinated with one dose or two doses for more than 4 months. But if we consider that in Italy among the over 50s the unvaccinated are about 6 percent (1,6 million out of 26,8 million over 50s) it is clear that the vaccinated have protection against severe disease and death about 20 times more than an unvaccinated person. The ISS has estimated that in the last 16 months with vaccines we have avoided about 150 thousand deaths from Covid”.
Article published on 15 April 2022 - 10:21
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