Around 310,000 people in Macao are currently eligible to receive a Covid-19 booster jab, but only 44 per cent of them, or around 137,000, have already received it, the Health Bureau’s Leong Iek Hou has said.
Macao’s Covid-19 booster vaccination programme covers all over-18s who have been fully (twice) inoculated with Covid-19 inactivated vaccines or mRNA vaccines at least six months ago.
Both types of Covid-19 vaccines currently available in Macao, China’s Sinopharm inactivated vaccine and Germany’s BioNTech mRNA vaccine, are two-dose vaccines.
Leong urged eligible individuals to receive a Covid-19 booster jab as soon as possible. He noted that the antibody levels of those who have received two Covid-19 jabs will gradually drop as time passes, so their immunity to Covid-19 infection, or ability to prevent themselves from suffering a serious condition or dying from the novel coronavirus disease, will decline. Leong said that a booster jab is able to significantly raise the Covid-19 antibody levels in a short time.
Leong also said that for the time being the Macao government does not plan to shorten the current six-month interval between the administration of the second and third Covid-19 jabs.
Leong said that while Macao’s Covid-19 vaccination rate has now reached around 80 per cent, the city’s immunity barrier against Covid-19 is still not strong enough as the jab rates amongst senior citizens and those with chronic diseases are still not high enough, apart from the fact that a certain percentage of young people have still not received a Covid-19 booster jab, The Macau Post Daily reported.
