The Standing Vaccination Commission (STIKO) has generally advocated a Corona booster vaccination for children and adolescents aged 12 to 17 years. The committee recommends a so-called booster vaccination for this age group with the mRNA vaccine Comirnaty from Biontech / Pfizer in the “age-appropriate dosage” and at least three months after the previous vaccination, announced the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) on Thursday. The draft resolution of the recommendation now has to go through what is known as an opinion procedure with the federal states and the specialist groups involved, so it is not yet a final recommendation.
The current situation with the sharply increasing number of cases due to the Omikron variant make a corresponding expansion of the vaccination campaign necessary, it said. A booster vaccination will improve the vaccination protection, which has decreased a few months after the basic immunization, and also reduce the probability of transmission of corona infections.
So far, booster vaccinations for children and adolescents aged twelve and over have been handled differently in the federal states. At the end of December, Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach (SPD) made it clear that children and young people between the ages of 12 and 17 are fundamentally entitled to booster vaccinations “regardless of the recommendations” of the STIKO.