Third Doses and How the Vaccines
Help to Protect
Third dose and Booster Vaccinations to begin this month.
As of September, in Wales, the third dose and booster vaccinations will begin, initially by offering a booster vaccine to people living and working in care homes and frontline health and social care staff.
Ministerial statement on Autumn boosters:
Eng: https://gov.wales/written-statement-covid-19-vaccination-jcvi-announcement-autumn-booster-programme
You will have seen the recent updates from The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation advising that people with severely weakened immune systems should be offered a third dose. The recommendation is that a third vaccine dose will be offered to this group as part of their primary COVID-19 vaccination schedule.
“At the current time, JCVI advises that a third primary dose be offered to individuals aged 12 years and over with severe immunosuppression in proximity of their first or second COVID-19 vaccine doses in the primary schedule.”
The difference between a Covid-19 booster vaccination and the third dose primary Covid-19 vaccine
There is different terminology being used to differentiate between the stages of the vaccine doses. To help you understand, the Kidney Charities Together Group have broken down the terms you may see it being referred to as.
Third dose primary Covid-19 vaccine
This third dose is for people who may not have had a sufficient immune response to the first two doses of a Covid-19 vaccination. This is likely to happen in people that are immunosuppressed or have other health conditions affecting their response to the vaccine. This dose is recommended to form part of a standard or primary course and is not deemed to be an “additional” or a “booster” dose, but a necessary dose to help increase these people’s immunity closer to levels others would already have from their first two doses.
Booster vaccine
The booster vaccine is for people whose initial immune response to their first two doses is likely to have weakened over time. Boosters are given when immunity gradually wanes to provide further protection against the Covid-19 virus.
How do the vaccines help protect me?
As part of The Kidney Charities Together group, we have access to great resources for you. Together the group has produced a brand new guide to the COVID-19 vaccines. You can use this guide to learn more about how the COVID vaccines help protect you. It goes into detail about how a vaccination works, what the coronavirus is, the COVID-19 vaccine, and antibody and immunity testing.
Hopefully this will give some peace of mind and help with understanding how the Covid-19 vaccine helps to protect & why we shouldn’t interpret the results of an antibody test as an indication of protection from infection.
You can view the guide here: How the COVID-19 vaccines help protect you
We will continue to seek further clarification for our kidney community following the JCVI’s update that adults and children aged 12 and over with a severely weakened immune system will now be offered a third COVID-19 vaccine dose.