Valeriu Gheorghita delivers extremely good news with a last-minute message for millions of Romanians from all over the country, and this is because he revealed the fact that at the moment we are far from considering that dose 4 of the vaccine against the Coronavirus is necessary.
Valeriu Gheorghita says that more studies are needed to analyze the effectiveness of such a dose of vaccine for the prevention of infection, not just the reduction of the risk of hospitalization or death, and depending on these results a decision will be made regarding its performance, or not.
"At the moment it is very important what the results of these studies will be. If we get results that confirm an increased protection against infection, that is, that we no longer get infected with the Omicron variant at all, then, perhaps, from a theoretical point of view, it would be justified.
But, if we are talking about a vaccine that offers the same level of protection for severe forms, for hospitalization and death, from our point of view I do not think that we will have benefits and, then, at this moment, I repeat, we do not have all the data available to be able to says that indeed a fourth dose is warranted.
What we do know, however, is that current vaccines, even after the first schedule, provide sufficient protection for severe forms of the disease, including with Omicron, and the booster dose provides long-lasting protection, because we know that immunity to Omicron is lost faster than we knew for the Delta version.
And this was also the objective of today's meeting, to try to increase the level of awareness of the risk of infection with SARS-CoV-2 and of unfavorable evolution, especially in the elderly, vulnerable people. Regarding the rate of administration of the booster dose, at the moment there are more than 2,33 million people who have received the booster dose of those eligible, which means a percentage of about 40% of those who can carry out the booster.
At the GP level, there are over 1.048.000 people who have been vaccinated with at least one dose so far, and in terms of vaccination capacity, we have 747 active vaccination centers with 1.057 streams, where these 231 pediatric vaccination clinics are included."
