The Standing Vaccination Commission (STIKO) now officially recommends a second corona booster vaccination for people over the age of 60. People in this age group and at the age of five years with an increased risk of severe Covid-19 progression as a result of an underlying disease should receive another booster, the panel said in a statement on Thursday. STIKO is extending its previous recommendation "with the primary goal of protecting particularly vulnerable people even better from serious Covid-19 diseases and Covid-19-related deaths".
The further booster, preferably with an MRNA vaccine, is advisable after "three immunological events"-for example after basic immuneization and first refreshing vaccination or basic immunization and SARS-COV-2 infection. As a rule, the condition for the second refreshing vaccination from 60 is that the first booster vaccination or the last Corona infection was at least six months ago. Only in justified individual cases can the distance to be reduced to four months, according to the STIKO.
So far, the Commission had already recommended the second booster to the following groups: people over the age of 70, people in care facilities, people with immunodeficiency and people at increased risk for severe Covid-19, as well as employees in medical facilities and care facilities.
Now the committee emphasized that a second refreshing vaccination in the extended group "continues to achieve a very high protection against heavy covid 19 processes". The risk groups mentioned should therefore not wait for a vaccine adapted to the omikron variant and postpone a vaccination, it said.
For those under 60 and those who have already come into contact with the virus four times, vaccination is not advised.
For the time being, healthy people under the age of 60 are not explicitly not advised. "According to the current state of knowledge, this group of people would not benefit from another vaccine dose." An exception is the staff in medical facilities and care facilities, for which the second booster is already recommended, according to the STIKO.
Even people with already four "immunological events" at a certain distance should not receive a further booster vaccination for the time being. However, in the case of the particularly vulnerable and the elderly, it can be decided individually whether a further dose of vaccine could be useful because of a declining performance of the immune system.
In the updated recommendation, the body also speaks for the use of Novavax protein vaccine for basic immunization for young people from 12 - so far it was only recommended from 18. In addition, the STIKO, particularly vulnerable groups from the age of 12, now recommends the Evusheld antibody preparation as a prevention measure in addition to vaccination. This includes, among other things, people with immune deficiency "in whom the absence of a protective immune response can also be expected after several vaccine doses". Evusheld consists of two Sars-Cov-2-neutralizing antibodies and can be injected into the muscle.
