Experts Call For Fourth Covid Jab For The Over 60s

Expert committees under the Centre for Health Protection are recommending that the government allow people aged 60 and above to get a fourth dose of Covid vaccine.

The committees, whose members include professors Lau Yu-lung, David Hui and Benjamin Cowling, said on Thursday that local data shows three doses are already highly effective in reducing Covid deaths and hospitalisation among adults.

But they said a booster for those aged 60 and over -- at least three months after their third jab -- will offer better protection, noting that most fatalities in the latest wave of Covid infections have been among people of this age group.

Government pandemic adviser Ivan Hung said antibody levels in older people tend to drop quite drastically.

“If you are a young individual, your antibody tends to last a bit longer. Besides, if you have been recently infected - and probably more than half the population of Hong Kong has been infected with Omicron - the natural immunity will actually last even longer, more likely more than six months,” he told RTHK.

“For healthy individuals, they will be recommended to receive the booster, perhaps, in about six months’ time. Hopefully by then, we will have the second generation or so-called Omicron-matched vaccine.”

Hung said he hoped the Omicron-matched vaccine would provide adequate protection and that people would not need to get jabbed for another year after getting a fourth dose.

Meanwhile, the expert committees also agreed that the vaccine can be safely given to people who have previously been infected and there is no need to do Covid screening before a jab is administered.

They said previously infected people should be allowed to get jabs from a month after their recovery.

The experts also raised no objections to the idea of giving people Covid jabs at the same time as flu shots or childhood immunisation vaccines.

______________________________