Third dose, the extension to the 50-year-old range is studied. Figliuolo: "More use of general practitioners"

The government aims to give a new impetus to the vaccination campaign, accelerating with third doses, the so-called "boosters".

There are over ten million vaccine stocks in the warehouses of the various territories, and with winter just around the corner and new variants looming there is no time to waste.

In a circular the Commissioner for the Emergency, Francesco Figliuolo, writes that "considering the current wide availability of vaccine and the persistent high potential of administration", we proceed "immediately to carry out vaccine boosters in parallel to all the categories indicated , without prejudice to the constraint of respecting the time interval of at least six months from the completion of the primary vaccination cycle ".

"The occasion - he continues - is propitious to recall the opportunity of an increasingly systematic and structured use of local medicine, with the widest possible involvement of free choice pediatricians, general practitioners and pharmacists". An involvement that aims to ensure "maximum capillarity" in a phase in which the flu vaccination will also be carried out.

VACCINES FOR THE OVER 50 - Through general practitioners and pharmacies, the audience of vaccinators with the third dose could soon expand to other sectors of work and, in particular, age groups, such as the fifties. The Minister for Health, Roberto Speranza, argues: in a speech to the Chamber he said that - in addition to residents of the RSA, health personnel, over sixty and frail people of all ages - the third dose will be evaluated "possibly also for other categories that today are out".

However, the positive opinion of the CTS is needed: "The timing on which we are thinking is to foresee the enlargement of the audience of those who will receive the booster between the end of the year and the beginning of next year", explains the undersecretary of Health, Andrea Costa, according to whom we can "look at the end of the year as a time limit in which we can reach 100% of the capacities that have not yet reached this percentage".

As we proceed shipped towards 31 December 2021, the date on which the state of emergency will expire, there are many hypotheses in view of 2022 from the farewell to the masks, up to a reduction of the sectors in which the Green pass is mandatory. Waiting to reach at least the other two and a half million Italians still skeptical and immunize 90% of over 12s by the end of November (at the moment it is 85.76% of first doses), so far 700 thousand third doses have been made.

(Unioneonline / D)