The goal is to prolong the effectiveness of coronavirus vaccines, which naturally declines over time. The target will be other people over the age of 18 who received their second injection at least 8 months ago.
The government says more than a million fitness professionals are expected to receive a booster dose by the end of the year. People over the age of 65 will be eligible in January.
Chiba University Hospital, near Tokyo, is one of the hospitals that has already started administering booster shots and is tracking the effects on antibodies in the blood.
Dr. Igari Hidetoshi says he hopes collecting data on the effectiveness of the booster will inspire others to get vaccinated for a third time.
However, although scientists around the world are analyzing the Omicron variant, it is still unclear exactly how effective the vaccines being used lately will be.
The Japanese government considers that the period between booster doses should be set “in principle at more than eight months after the second injection”. This is a longer period than in other countries that have started administering third injections, and there is pressure to reconsider. the synchronization in light of the Omicron variant.
Britain recently announced it would halve the period between the second and third injections to three months, Israel and France set the period at months, and the United States and Germany set it at six months.
Hosaka Nobuto, mayor of Tokyo’s Setagaya district, is among those calling for a shorter term. He worries that the Omicron variant is highly transmissible and that it will be too late to offer boosters only after infections have spread. He said he wanted the government to be more flexible as the situation evolves.
Nakagawa Toshio, president of the Japan Medical Association, broadly agrees. “There are fears that the number of Omicron cases is increasing rapidly,” he says. “It has become mandatory to advance the deployment schedule. “
Health Ministry officials say that in case of mass infection in medical or elderly care facilities, they would possibly be allowed to receive a third injection after a six-month period as an exceptional measure.
They also say that if many local governments bring forward the time of the third injection, the number of eligible people will increase and this could lead to a shortage of vaccines at a critical time.