Because the number of infections is rising again across Europe despite the summer weather, the EU health authorities are urging them to hurry: they recommend that all over 60-year-olds should have a second booster immediately. Chancellor Scholz is also promoting it.
The EU recommends a second corona booster vaccination for people over 60 years of age. “In view of the renewed increase in cases and hospital admissions at the beginning of the summer, I urge everyone to get vaccinated and boosted as soon as possible,” said EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides, according to a statement from the EU Health Agency ECDC and the EU Medicines Agency EMA . “We have no time to lose.”
Kyriakides called on EU member states to “immediately provide second booster vaccinations” for people over 60 and other particularly vulnerable people. In Germany, the Standing Vaccination Commission (STIKO) has so far recommended a second booster vaccination for people over the age of 70, at-risk patients and residents of care facilities and employees in the medical field and in care facilities. There is no general vaccination recommendation for over 60-year-olds.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz had already called on people aged 60 and over for a fourth vaccination against Corona last week. In the ARD summer interview, he said that he himself was one of the seven percent of people in Germany who had already received a second booster vaccination after the two vaccinations for the basic immunization. It would be a “good thing” if everyone over the age of 60 did the same, “because it helps”.
In view of the easy transferability of the omicron variant, the nationwide seven-day incidence is currently 661.4 new corona infections per 100,000 inhabitants. The situation in the clinics is already coming to a head. “We have to make sure again that we keep our ranks closed, which means we have to shift staff, we have to get staff out of the office, so after two weekends we also work the third weekend,” said the President of the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive – and emergency medicine (DIVI), Gernot Marx, on ZDF.
“Unfortunately, we have to postpone some operations that are not absolutely necessary so that we can take care of all our emergencies properly and safely.” Marx had already pointed out at the weekend that more than half of the intensive care units (55 percent) were no longer operating as usual.
The German Association of General Practitioners had called on the federal government to launch a new vaccination campaign in the fight against the corona pandemic. “A positive vaccination campaign is needed – not only for the fourth vaccination, but also to close the vaccination gaps for the first and third vaccinations,” said the head of the association, Ulrich Weigeldt, to the newspapers of the editorial network Germany (RND).
