Fifth dose Covid vaccine: what Bassetti, Crisanti, Gismondo and Pregliasco say

Fifth dose Covid vaccine, what do the experts think of the additional booster dose? In the aftermath of the ministerial circular in which it is recommended to over 80, guests of RSA and over 60 frail for basic diseases to be administered a fifth dose of bivalent anti Covid-19 vaccine updated to the Omicron variants, the fifth dose that they can receive, on request, also all the others over 60, here is the opinion of the scholars contacted by Adnkronos Health. Read also BASSETTI – “Better late than never, since the campaign for the fourth dose started I said that it was important in some situations to allow the fifth dose especially for those who had made the recall several months ago – comments Matteo Bassetti, director of Infectious diseases of San Martino di Genova – I refer exclusively to the elderly, the over 80s, and people with severe immunodeficiencies, from tumors to leukemia. These people can benefit from the fifth dose. Now the message must be not to divert attention in whom must make the recall especially if done six months ago “. CHRISANTS – “Unfortunately, the frail remain at risk of very serious complications and it is right to protect them” from Covid, “to give them the opportunity to protect themselves” says Andrea Crisanti. “I have said it several times and I am convinced of it: we must use an approach that somehow aims to safeguard the frail”, he highlights at Adnkronos Salute, reiterating what he believes is the line to follow to manage this phase of the pandemic. GISMONDO – But according to Maria Rita Gismondo, director of the Laboratory of clinical microbiology, virology and bio-emergency diagnostics at the Sacco Hospital in Milan, “we cannot continue to vaccinate ourselves every 3 months. Give the right space, where necessary, to therapies, now that Covid is no longer the serious disease it used to be “, and points to” an annual anti-flu vaccine “. On the vaccination front, therefore, the expert indicates the objective of an annual product to be co-administered together with the anti-flu prophylaxis. Maybe a ‘2 in 1’ product, which with a single injection stimulates the immune response against both infections? “It depends on the quality of the product that you manage to propose”, replies Gismondo. PREGLIASCO – “Vaccination fatigue and tiredness are already taking hold and it is not easy. But in the current phase that still sees this Covid wave uphill, I think it is important to relaunch this vaccination. It goes without saying that in the near future we will have to get to an appointment annual, perhaps with combined vaccines, which are currently being validated, to make a single injection and protect against flu and Covid “. The virologist Fabrizio Pregliasco comments on the ministerial circular in this way. However, the professor of Hygiene of the State University of Milan points out that the point of arrival must be that of the annual vaccine boosters. “For now I believe that this is an indication in the light of a season that could still be challenging, with the presence of flu and Covid together. So to reduce the effects” of the co-circulation of multiple respiratory viruses. “There is”, concludes Pregliasco. MINELLI – “At the dawn of the third year of the Covid era, I believe that no one truly in good faith and free from preconceptions can deny that the anti-Covid vaccine was decisive and decisive for the epilogue of the health emergency in the strict sense – highlights the immunologist Mauro Minelli, responsible for Southern Italy of the Foundation for personalized medicine – This, on the strictly clinical and social prevention side, means that a booster dose, perhaps once a year in early autumn – dose that for immunosuppressed subjects or elderly people over 80 would constitute the fifth administration – is certainly an opportunity to face the winter more serenely “. On the fact that for the recall of the vaccination campaign there is only the recommendation, “I cannot say to what extent ‘suggesting’ the fifth dose can prove to be an effective solution, because – he warns – as already happened for the fourth, the option of a reference left to the will of the individual makes every result random. In short – concludes the immunologist – we could say that one heals better from Covid than from the old Italian style “.