Recently, the Ministry of Health and Social Protection authorized the application of the fourth dose for people with autoimmune diseases or who have organ transplants.
(Lea: Fourth dose of anticovid vaccine in Colombia for special cases).
“We are authorizing the fourth dose, (second booster dose), but only on medical recommendation”, mentioned the director of Promotion and Prevention of the Ministry of Health, Gerson Bermont.
The senior official explained that, for now, the Health portfolio has no plans to expand the target population for this second booster dose. In this sense, its application will only be with authorization and by medical recommendation.
For Colombians who are enabled, they will be able to access the fourth dose after 30 days after receiving the third dose. In the case of those who were vaccinated with the Janssen pharmaceutical monodose, this new booster will be the third vaccine.
Bermont assured that heterologous vaccination will be allowed to complete schemes, where the Janssen vaccine will be included in the application of reinforcements.
(Lea: Subvariant BA.2 of ómicron may cause another increase in cases).
To date, the National Vaccination Plan has completed the application of 79,751,465 vaccinesthus reaching 34,435,604 complete regimens and more than 9 million booster doses.
For now, vaccination coverage is an estimated 19.34% for booster doses (third dose) and 67.45% for full schedules.
The different territorial entities have been working to increase vaccination coverage in departments and municipalities to achieve coverage greater than 70%. “486 municipalities are above 70% in complete schemes, registering an increase of 9 municipalities in the last week. For their part, 634 municipalities still do not reach 70%Gerson Bermont said.
(Keep reading: Pfizer’s plan for a fourth dose against covid).
Finally, worldwide the fourth dose has been considered a ‘hasty’ measure and the importance of completing vaccination schedules for the first doses has been warned.
BRIEFCASE
With information from EL TIEMPO*
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