UK to offer third anti-Covid jab to most vulnerable

LONDON/BRUSSELS: The UK’s health minister said on Wednesday that the government will offer a third coronavirus vaccine jab to half a million people with severely weakened immune systems. Health minister Sajid Javid said a third dose will be offered by the state-run health service to those who “may have received less protection against the virus from two vaccine doses”.

Javid announced the roll-out after the government advisory body the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) recommended a third dose for those aged over 12 who have conditions such as leukaemia, advanced HIV or recent organ transplants. It said that the third dose by preference should be an mRNA vaccine - so, not the AstraZeneca jab.

Meanwhile, the European Union’s infectious diseases agency on Thursday urged countries to push ahead with their primary coronavirus vaccination programmes and played down the need for booster shoots to ward off the Delta variant among the general public.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said that approved vaccines are “currently highly effective” in limiting the impact of Covid-19.

On Wednesday, France became the first major EU country to start administering booster shots of Covid-19 vaccine to people over 65 and those with underlying health conditions as the Delta variant spreads in the country.

Vietnam, meanwhile, could be facing a lengthy battle against the coronavirus disease and cannot rely on lockdown and quarantine measures indefinitely, its Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh said, as the country struggles to contain its deadliest outbreak so far.

It has deployed soldiers and forced residents of its biggest city to stay in their homes in recent weeks, in its most drastic measures yet to fight an outbreak that has shattered what was one of the world’s best containment records.