ECDC: Guidelines for new COVID19 vaccines – Who will be prioritized?

European health authorities today recommended that priority be given to the elderly and people at risk of severe Covid-19 when the new, adapted vaccines for the Omicron variant are administered.

Pregnant women and medical staff should also be given priority, according to the joint statement from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).

The EMA last week approved vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, which target both the original strain of the new coronavirus and Omicron’s BA.1 subvariant.

“ECDC and EMA recommend that booster doses should be given as a priority to people who are most at risk of developing a severe form of the disease, due to certain risk factors,” the two agencies said. Vulnerable people include the elderly over 60, the immunocompromised, those suffering from other diseases and pregnant women. Priority should also be given to those working in nursing homes.

The European agencies said that the original vaccines should be given to people who have had the previous doses in the event that doses of the adapted vaccine are not available, because they “remain effective against severe disease, hospitalization and death”. These vaccines target the original strain of the virus first identified in Wuhan, China, but have proven less effective against subsequent variants. After the Alpha and Delta variants, Omicron and its sub-variants dominated the world this year.

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