Mobile vaccination teams should be sent into care and nursing homes, the text says, to offer Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna booster shots to residents, regardless of which vaccine they had originally. A booster shot will also be offered to anyone who received the two-dose AstraZeneca or single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccines, the document released by Spahn’s ministry said, “in the interests of preventative healthcare”. Both AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson are viral vector vaccines, whereas the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines use novel mRNA technology that has shown high efficacy in studies. There are also concerns about a slowdown in the country’s vaccination rate, with just over 52 percent of the population fully inoculated. What is needed to help suppress a fourth Covid wave in Germany “is a high vaccination rate among 18-to-59 year olds”.

Source: The Local August 02, 2021 17:14 UTC