The Directorate-General for Health (DGS) will extend the indication for flu vaccination to people aged 50 and over, the Minister for Health announced today.
“In a few hours’ time, people over 50 will also be able to get vaccinated,” said Manuel Pizarro, at the inauguration of the Beato Health Unit in Lisbon, noting that the decision had to do with the availability of vaccines.
To date, the flu vaccine is recommended for people aged 60 and over, but the Directorate-General for Health’s decision is to cover a wider range of people, namely the 50-59 age group.
“The distribution of these ages is based on a scientific assessment of the advantage of vaccination […]. What the DGS did was to assess whether or not, if there were still vaccines available, there was an advantage for people’s health in widening the range of people who could be vaccinated,” said Manuel Pizarro.
The DGS will announce its decision later today, “in a few hours”, according to the Director-General of Health, Rita Sá Machado, who was also present at the inauguration of the Beato Health Unit.
Asked if the extension of flu vaccination also had to do with the excess mortality rate between the ages of 45 and 64, the Health Minister said that “there is no doubt that this was part of the rationale behind the DGS’s decision”.
Manuel Pizarro stressed that the figures on excessive mortality “have to be analyzed with due caution”, in order to understand the circumstances in which this occurred and what measures should be taken to correct this situation.
Without a coat to protect himself from the cold, the minister began by saying that as a “man from the North” he is used to lower temperatures, but in his speech outside the Beato Health Unit he admitted that he wasn’t dressed appropriately for the ceremony: “The DGS recommendations are that we should dress warmly when it’s cold and I actually came a little recklessly”.
“To compensate, I’m going to do my job of calling for vaccination,” he said, arguing that it is the best form of protection against the flu, explaining that “it doesn’t reduce the risk of getting the flu, it greatly reduces the severity of the flu”, which “makes all the difference”, especially in the elderly.
Manuel Pizarro stressed that the vaccination season “isn’t over yet”, saying that it is possible to get the flu and covid-19 vaccine “in more than 1,000 health centers and more than 2,500 pharmacies”.
With regard to last week’s flu vaccination coverage rate for people over 60 being around 63%, according to official figures, which is below that recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO), the minister explained that the group of people aged between 60 and 64 who were advised this year to get vaccinated did not take up the vaccination as expected.
“This year, for the first time, we have changed the population group indicated for flu vaccination: everyone over the age of 60. In other years it was over 65. This allows me to say that we’ve never vaccinated so many people in absolute numbers, it’s a record number of flu vaccinations,” he said.
“Having included people aged between 60 and 64 in the indication group [for vaccination], this year we haven’t managed to get the same uptake in this age group as we have had in other years. We even have a slightly higher uptake among the over-80s. We have the same uptake as last year in people aged between 70 and 79,” he said, reiterating the call for vaccination.
