Breaking: Spain's Ministry of Health makes changes to Covid booster guidelines

The Public Health Commission, which is made up of experts from the Ministry of Health and the autonomous communities, now recommends that adults who have been infected with coronavirus should receive the third dose of the vaccine five months after diagnosis – although they can do so from the fourth week onwards – and that children aged 5 to 11 years who have been infected, and have not yet been vaccinated, should receive a single dose.

The announcement comes after the Ministry of Health came under fire from immunologists earlier this month for shortening the time frame between infection and the third dose – moving it from five to four weeks. The experts not only pointed out that it did not make sense but that it could be counterproductive for the body.
In the case of children who have been infected after the first jab, new guidelines state that they should have a second dose eight weeks after diagnosis, as long as they have completed the recommended eight weeks between doses, according to the Ministry of Health.
The Government maintains that the booster dose allows a “more powerful and broader immune response in terms of neutralising other variants of the virus, compared to the immune response observed in people who only suffered an infection or who only received two doses”.
“In addition, Omicron infections increase the response of memory cells to viral antigens other than protein S compared to infections after vaccination caused by the Delta variant,” adds the Health Ministry.

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