Fourth Vaccine Dose Update.

Here's the kicker from the province's announcement yesterday.

Last week I mentioned that the big data sets for fourth shots under Omicron were coming. Here's the first one, with the Pfizer mRNA vaccine, from Israel, published yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine. The following is a description of the cohort from the paper's abstract:

...Using the Israeli Ministry of Health database, we extracted data on 1,252,331 persons who were 60 years of age or older and eligible for the fourth dose during a period in which the B.1.1.529 (omicron) variant of SARS-CoV-2 was predominant (January 10 through March 2, 2022). We estimated the rate of confirmed infection and severe Covid-19 as a function of time starting at 8 days after receipt of a fourth dose (four-dose groups) as compared with that among persons who had received only three doses (three-dose group)...

Eric Topol summarizes the paper's findings here:

So.

Given all that, I would be very surprised if the province doesn't move down to age 60 for everyone as that group approaches six months after their third jab.

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While these fourth shot data are important, especially for the large elderly at-risk portion of our population, I can't emphasize how important it is for anybody who has already had their 2nd shot but nothing more to go out and get their 3rd shot if they want to significantly reduce their risk of serious illness in the event that they get caught up in the coming (already arrived?) 2nd Omicron variant wave.

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