This is an exception to the rule.
A WHO expert committee recommended Monday to give an additional dose of anti-Covid vaccine to people "moderately or severely immunocompromised", for all vaccines approved by the UN agency.
WHO experts were careful to explain on Monday that this was not about recommending a third dose for the general population, for which the organization continues to recommend a moratorium until the end of the year, to release doses and give them to countries where the vaccination rate remains much too low.
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"The recommendation we are giving now is that people who are immunocompromised be given an additional dose" to boost their immune response to the level of protection required to prevent them from developing severe forms of the disease requiring hospitalization or causing death, explained Dr Kate O'Brien, Director of the Immunization Department at WHO.
Immunocompromised people - whose defense system of the human body is not strong enough - had been excluded from clinical trials which made it possible to determine the vaccination protocols.
"This third dose (
the vaccines authorized by the WHO require 2 initial doses with the exception of the Janssen vaccine which only requires one
) should be separated from the second by one to three months", explained the doctor. O'Brien.
A 3rd dose after Sinovac and Sinopharm from the age of 60
The same committee said a third dose, for those 60 years of age or older, was needed for patients who have been immunized with anti-Covid vaccines from Chinese companies Sinovac and Sinopharm.
The third dose may be another vaccine of another type, the WHO SAGE committee said at a press briefing.
Read alsoFive minutes to understand the approval of the Sinovac vaccine by the WHO
The WHO has approved the two messenger RNA vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-Biontech, the two Chinese vaccines from Sinopharm and Sinovac, the vaccine from Johnson & Johnson and that from Astrazeneca.
