The national vaccination committee currently recommends the fourth vaccination for everyone over the age of 80. A reduction to 65 years is under discussion. Younger people can get the refresher voluntarily – at the earliest four months after the third bite, which is part of the basic immunization.
So far, according to the new data, 95,199 people have received a fourth stitch and another 732 have received a fifth or more doses of vaccine. More than half of the booster vaccinations were obtained by older people aged 75 and over (50,218), a third of the “refreshers” live in Vienna (30,447).
As of Wednesday, a total of 6.875 million people had been vaccinated against the corona virus at least once. However, the Ministry of Health has changed the rules according to which the number of fully vaccinated people in Austria is recorded. So far, the vaccination certificates have been used as a yardstick. In other words: Whoever has a valid vaccination certificate was shown as fully vaccinated in the statistics. In future, the ministry will follow the recommendations of the National Vaccination Committee (NIG) – regardless of whether the relevant vaccination certificate has already expired or not.
In practice, this means that people under 80 will continue to show up as vaccinated in the statistics even if their vaccination certificate expires. This is because the vaccination committee has not yet recommended a booster vaccination (“4th stitch”) for this age group.
The difference is already noticeable in the numbers: In the new evaluation, 80,735 people are still considered vaccinated for whom the vaccination certificate has already expired. Accordingly, the vaccination coverage of the population is slightly higher according to the new calculation method than according to the old calculation: 62.5 percent of people in Austria are currently considered vaccinated according to the recommendation, but only 61.6 percent still have a valid vaccination certificate.
Should the vaccination committee make a recommendation for a booster vaccination for the younger age groups as well, then the vaccination coverage of the population would drop accordingly. The Ministry of Health also refers to this in a broadcast on Wednesday: “The NIG recommendation is a living document that is constantly being adapted to the latest epidemiological developments. The change in the methodology for calculating the vaccination rate thus ensures that the communicated vaccination rates are also constantly updated to the current be adapted to epidemiological developments,” it says.
Source: Nachrichten
