You may not need a fourth Covid vaccine now but a flu shot

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

fourth shot of the Covid vaccine may be unwarranted. Instead, vaccination against flu might be a better idea, given the high number of cases in many cities, according to them. To be sure, a fourth Covid dose can protect against a recurrence, considering it has been a while since the second dose for most people and only 220 million took the third dose in India. Some studies have shown a fourth dose could help build up resistance as immunity against Covid would have fallen for most people. Health experts, however, don't see the need for a fourth dose, especially since India's Covid cases have come down to 23 cases in the last 24 hours. That's the lowest daily infection count since March 2020. «There is no need for another dose of Covid vaccine right now,» said Anurag Agrawal, former head of the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (Insacog), the laboratory consortium, and chair of the World Health Organisation's Technical Advisory Group on Virus Evolution.

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In particular, he doesn't recommend another shot for young people unless advisable on account of medical conditions. «A total of three doses can be given and there is no requirement of further booster as of now,» said NK Arora, chair of the Covid-19 working group. Covid vaccines were rushed to market without the full range of pharmacovigilance processes and all the risks may not be known, pointed out some experts. Also, considering that the severely mutated Omicron variant is the dominant strain, the older vaccines may not even be effective anymore, experts said.

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Besides, Omicron has been a mild strain and