Head of the Immunology Department at the Complejo Hospitalario Universitario de Santiago de Compostela (CHUS), Servicio Gallego de Salud (SERGAS)
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) consider it too early for the general population to receive a fourth dose of covid-19 mRNA vaccines. Both agencies do agree that people over 80 years of age should receive it because of their increased risk of severe disease.
The director of the Vaccine Strategy of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), Marco Cavaleri, told a press conference on 11 January that "it is not sustainable in the long term to continue giving booster doses every three or four months [to the general population]". Spanish immunologists agree that this is not the right thing to do. In these reactions they explain why.
In the last few days, data, preprints, press releases and even graphs have started to arrive via social media showing how neutralising antibodies against the omicron variant behave. These studies are preliminary and we will have to wait and see how these lab data translate into the real world.