Greece announced on Monday that booster shots of Covid-19 vaccine will become available from September 30 for all adults aged over 60 and healthcare professionals.
“The increased risk for people over 60 is reflected in epidemiological data,” said Maria Theodoridou, chair of the Greek National Vaccination Committee, during a briefing on the pandemic.
“The percentage of patients aged 60-79 who are in special ICU beds reached 59.02 percent and deaths 48 percent.”
Marios Themistokleous, Health Ministry secretary general for Primary Health Care, specified that the third dose will be optional and vaccination will be considered complete when two doses of a jab or one for the single dose jab have been administered.
Booster shots for people over 65 in the U.S.
Last week a Food and Drug Administration vaccine advisory panel in the U.S. decided that booster shots would only be necessary for those over the age of 65 as well as high risk individuals with severe illness.
However, it voted against giving Pfizer/BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine booster shot to the majority of the population.
After firmly establishing that the existing doses of the vaccine were more than sufficient for healthy adults aged 16 to 65, the committee reported their decision to the FDA. The FDA is not required by law to follow the committee’s recommendations, but it is extremely uncommon for them not to.
Earlier in September, the pharmaceutical firm Moderna released new data regarding breakthrough cases of the coronavirus that it says supports the need for a third booster shot of its coronavirus vaccine.
The Pfizer Corporation had announced that evidence from Israel shows a third coronavirus vaccine shot restores protection back up to the original effectiveness rate of 95% as it made the case to the US Food and Drug Administration for boosters.
39 Covid deaths in Greece
Greek health authorities also announced that to date 60.6 percent of the general public and 70 percent of all adults have already received one dose.
On Monday, the National Public Health Organization (EODY) confirmed 2,126 new coronavirus infections in the last 24 hours, with 11 of these identified at entry points to the country.
Since the pandemic began, Greece has confirmed 632,908 infections. In the confirmed cases of the last 7 days, 138 infections are related to travel from abroad and 2,866 to other confirmed cases.
There are also 39 deaths recorded in the last 24 hours, bringing the total of pandemic victims to 14,505. Of these, 95.4 percent had an underlying condition and/or were aged 70 or over.
A total of 342 patients are on ventilators in hospitals. Their median age is 65 years and 79.8 percent have an underlying condition and/or are aged 70 or over. Of the total, 313 (91.52 percent) are unvaccinated or partly vaccinated and 29 (8.48 percent) are fully vaccinated.
The median age of new infections is 39 years, while the median age of the deceased is 78.
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