UK ‘considering fourth Covid vaccine dose’ after Israel gives green light to second booster

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

Health experts are in the process of deciding whether a second Covid booster, and fourth overall jab against the virus, will be offered in the UK next year.

It comes after Israel became the first country to announce it would go ahead with such a move – for all people aged over 60, the clinically vulnerable and healthcare workers – closely followed by Germany.

The former’s prime minister Naftali Bennett welcomed the recommendation by a government panel, saying it would help the country get through a potential wave of infections caused by the Omicron variant.

Britain’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) said it would need to examine evidence on the amount of immunity given by the three jabs currently available, as well as data on hospitalisations for Omicron, before making any decision on a fourth.

As has been repeated during the tense build-up to Christmas, JCVI members said they needed more real-world evidence about the latest variant’s severity before they could make a formal decision.

Prof Anthony Harnden, deputy chair of JCVI, which advises the government on immunisation, told The Telegraph yesterday: “We need to see more data. We are in different circumstances to Israel and we need to see more data on waning immunity and vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation.”

It is thought health officials and ministers will be reluctant to press ahead with a fourth booster rollout unless absolutely necessary, due to the huge cost of the campaigns and the intrusive need to divert GPs and others in the NHS from their primary jobs to assist.

They also believe that the UK’s decision to increase the gap between the first and second doses of vaccine to 12 weeks gave people longer lasting immunity than in other countries. In Israel, for example, the gap between both doses was just three weeks – the original guidance from Pfizer.

However, scientists have pointed out that Britain is already being engulfed by Omicron and that the current third booster vaccination programme is still trying to catch up in terms of building immunity.

On Wednesday, the first UK data of its kind appeared to confirm what experts had been saying for weeks – that Omicron is a milder variant of Covid. The figures suggest there is a 20 to 25 per cent reduced chance of a hospital visit, compared with Delta, and at least a 40 per cent lower risk of being admitted overnight.

But as daily Covid cases topped 100,000 for the first time since the pandemic began yesterday, experts warned that Omicron’s high transmissibility means the NHS is still at risk of being overwhelmed.

Prof Adam Finn, a professor of paediatrics at the University of Bristol and another JCVI member, said it is possible people may need to get a fourth Covid vaccine dose – but that nothing has been decided yet.

“I think there will be people probably who will receive a fourth jab – whether that will be everyone, I think, is still very much in doubt,” he told LBC Radio this morning, adding scientists needed time to “see how things go through this wave and beyond”.

He added: “I think there may well be people who received their boosters early who are in the older more vulnerable age groups who may need a further jab – that has not been decided yet.

“It is still under review and discussion, and we will be providing recommendations on that at some point in the new year.”

Israel said it was sharing its data with the UK after the country’s Pandemic Expert Committee recommended a fourth dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

It will be administered at least four months after the third, which means, if the UK adopts the same process, vaccines could be administered to those who received their boosters at the very beginning of the process here in the first few weeks of the new year.

The Middle Eastern nation’s rollout is due to be given a final go ahead by the health ministry in the coming days.

Speaking about the approval of a fourth vaccination in Germany, the country’s health minister Karl Lauterbach said: “An offensive booster campaign is our most important building block in the fight against Omicron.

“The level of protection against severe Covid-19 symptoms after a booster shot is very high. I would estimate it goes well over 90 per cent.”

Mr Lauterbach also announced that Germany has ordered four million doses of the newly approved vaccine Novavax and 11 million doses of the new Valneva shot, which is waiting for market authorisation.

In Britain, people with weakened immune systems are already entitled to a fourth jab but experts will now consider whether the rollout should be extended to the elderly and other vulnerable groups.

The JCVI also announced yesterday that booster vaccinations should be offered to those aged 16 to 17, children aged 12 to 15 who are in a clinical risk group or who are a household contact of someone who is immunosuppressed, and children aged 12 to 15 years who are severely immunocompromised and who have had a third primary dose.

Members said they required “more real-world evidence” before recommending the mass vaccination of children as young as five, after they found that a million doses among five to 11-year-olds would prevent only two healthy children from requiring intensive care.