"Vaccination always helps" - chief medical officer calls for boosters with BA.1 vaccine

The German medical officers have expressly spoken out in favor of widespread use of the new corona vaccines adapted to the omicron subvariant BA.1. “With the approval of the new Omicron BA.1 vaccine, many are wondering whether they should take this vaccine for a booster dose or whether they should wait for the vaccine adapted to BA.4 and BA.5 "Said the chairman of the Federal Association of Physicians in Public Health Services (BVÖGD), Johannes Nießen, to the newspapers of the Funke media group on Friday.

Anyone who now wants to get a fourth vaccination should “not hesitate and wait for further vaccines,” said Nießen. "He's not doing anything wrong using the BA.1 vaccine."

At this point in time, it is not even possible to say which of the two types of vaccine provides better protection in autumn and winter, said Nießen. “So far, the necessary data has not been available. We don't even know which variant will be dominant in autumn and winter. It may well be that it is the BA.1 subtype again.” But it is clear: “Vaccination always helps.”

On Thursday, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) approved the BA.1-adapted corona vaccines from the manufacturers Biontech/Pfizer and Moderna. Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) spoke of a “quantum leap in the fight against the pandemic” and wants to make the new vaccines available as early as next week.

The approved vaccines are so-called bivalent corona vaccines, which are designed both to defend against the original form of the corona virus and BA.1, a subtype of the omicron variant of the corona virus.

However, the newer omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 now predominate worldwide. They had caused the latest corona waves in Europe and the USA in the past few months. According to the EMA, a corona vaccine tailored to these two subtypes from the Mainz-based company Biontech and its US partner Pfizer is expected to be approved in autumn.