Over 50s could be offered Covid booster jabs in the autumn, with a decision on the move expected to be made in the next few weeks.
Government sources have suggested it is in favour of expanding eligibility but interim advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) is to restrict them to over-65s. JCVI member Prof Adam Finn refused to reveal its final decision but said the latest booster jabs will come too late to protect against the current Covid surge.
Prof Finn told the Mirror : “What we’re seeing is immune escape and that means the duration of protection against infection and transmission is getting worse and worse. So the value in terms of indirect protection is very low.
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“Since so few healthy young adults and children actually get seriously ill themselves there’s very little gain to be had by putting a lot of effort into immunising them. What these vaccines can do is to protect people from getting seriously ill so we need to give them to people who are potentially going to get seriously ill, and that’s elderly people and those with underlying health conditions.”
The JCVI has increased its meetings to once weekly before its final recommendation to Government as UK cases increased to an estimated 2.3 million last week. It is being fuelled by Omicron sub-variants BA.4 and BA.5 which are better at evading current vaccines to spread less severe illness.
It will then be up to ministers to accept the final JCVI advice, or enact a different booster programme. So far Government has accepted all JCVI recommendations in full.
Prof Finn said he expected the summer peak to hit soon and for case rates to fall before rising again as we go in to winter. He said: “Everyone is now really focused on a potential winter wave. That’s much more the worry at the moment than what’s going on right now. Clearly it is a worry but there’s not much to be done about it [with vaccination] apart from trying to encourage people not to infect the group as much as possible.”
The JCVI recommended in May that only healthy over-65s should be offered a booster in the autumn, along with younger people at clinical risk, elderly care home residents and frontline health and care workers. If eligibility was expanded to over-50s then an extra six million middle-aged people could get a fourth dose.
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