Greece’s National Vaccination Committee proposes 4th dose of vaccination against Covid-19 for all over 30 years old and a strong recommendation for the 4th dose (second booster shot) for all over 60.
The online platform for the 4th dose appointments is expected to open soon, in the next days, media report early Thursday afternoon.
According to state broadcaster ERT, vaccination with the 4th dose is not mandatory.
Note that so far, there is no official statement by the Vaccination Committee. KTG will keep you posted as soon as more details are published.
It is recalled that the online platform to citizens over 60 to book vaccination appointments for the 4th dose is open since April, while immune-suppressed people could make their 2nd booster shot since January.
However, the flow of people over 60 to vaccination centers has been and remains low. Only 15% of the beneficiaries, a population of about 300,000, have been vaccinated with the 4th dose, so far, media report.
The Vaccination Committee met today as there is a spike of daily Covid-19 infections in the last couple of days, while the tests positivity index and the transmissibility indicator Rt have increased to median 8.77% and 1.32 (from 0.96) last week) respectively.
The Health Ministry claims that the infections spike is “fully under control,” as the hard indicators like deaths, patients in ICUs and hospitalizations remain low.
According to EODY data on Wednesday, admission of Covid-cases to hospitals increased to 200 in the last 24 hours, while Covid-hospitalization in total amount to 965. The majority of them, 732, are hospitalized in simple Covid-wards, a little over 100 in “increase Care units” and 94 in ICUs.
Also on Wednesday, EODY announced 10,528 new coronavirus cases in past 24 hours, however without adding the1,631 reinfections.
Infections on Thursday, June 23:
- 10,474 coronavirus infections + 1,797 reinfections =12,271
- 17 deaths, 88 intubated in ICUs.
According to some experts the daily infections numbers do not correspond to the actual number of cases in the community as there is no epidemiological surveillance and control as in the past.
The spike come in fact two weeks after the mandatory use of masks indoors was dropped, the highly transmissible subvariants Omicron BA4 and Omicron BA5 are very active and people, locals and tourists, go around very relaxed and hardly take any protection measures.
Speaking to media, some health expert proposes the return of mask in all indoor spaces including airplanes, trains, touristic buses), safety distances where there are queues and outdoor entertainment and culture events in order to prevent an infections and intubations increase as observed in the last week.
POLL: 4th vaccination dose. What will you do?
virus gonna virus !