Fourth dose will be authorized for people over 50, says Queiroga

The Minister of Health, Marcelo Queiroga, said this Thursday (2) that the ministry will approve the application of the fourth dose of the vaccine against Covid-19 – or the second booster dose – for people over 50 years old.

“The second booster dose is already authorized for people over 60 years old by the Ministry of Health, and we are going to expand it to people over 50 years old,” Queiroga said on Thursday (2), after participating in a ministerial event in Brasília.

The second booster dose against Covid-19 has been authorized for people aged 60 and over since the middle of last month. “We have a vaccine. The federal government has prepared itself for this,” said Queiroga.

Details on how the fourth dose application scheme for people over 50 will work will be described in a technical note to be released by the ministry. In the folder, the expectation is that the document will be published this Friday (3).

When approving the fourth dose for people aged 60 and over, Saúde recommended the application four months after immunization with the first booster dose. The vaccines indicated for the scheme were those from pharmaceutical companies Pfizer, Janssen and AstraZeneca.

About vaccines such as CoronaVac, with a technology different from the others, not being targeted for the scheme, the folder said that it awaits “new scientific evidence on its effectiveness as booster doses in the elderly and immunocompromised”.

The expansion of the target audience for the fourth dose takes place at a time when Brazil is facing, after flexibilities, an increase in the number of cases and hospitalizations by Covid-19 and while states and municipalities return to, at least, recommend the use of masks indoors.

The number of deaths, although also on the rise, has not had the same rise. Published studies point out that the vaccines used in Brazil increase protection against Covid-19 even among people who have already had the disease, especially preventing the occurrence of deaths.

Until yesterday, 77.4% of the Brazilian population had already taken at least two doses of the vaccine against Covid-19, according to data compiled by the consortium of press vehicles of which UOL is a part.

Almost 93 million Brazilians have already taken at least one booster dose against the new coronavirus, and 3.5 million, up to four, also according to the consortium’s data.