Denmark First In Europe To Offer 4th Covid Vaccine Dose

By Derek Saul, Forbes Staff

Topline

Denmark became the first country in Europe to unveil plans to offer a fourth dose of the Covid-19 vaccine Wednesday, as countries increasingly turn to an additional jab to combat a rise in coronavirus infections globally despite a lack of evidence for the effectiveness of the additional dose.

Denmark is the third nation to announce plans for a fourth Covid-19 vaccine dose. Ritzau Scanpix/AFP via Getty Images

Key Facts

The country will roll out a fourth jab for its “most vulnerable citizens,” Magnus Heunicke, Denmark’s health minister, said Wednesday during a Danish-language press conference translated by Reuters.

Chile and Israel are the only other nations to announce fourth shots, which have already begun to be administered to eligible populations in both countries.

Heunicke did not say which Danish citizens will be eligible for the fourth dose or when rollout for the jab will begin, according to Reuters.

Chief Critic

Marco Cavaleri, head of vaccine rollout at the European Union’s drug regulating agency, said Tuesday that the approval of a fourth vaccine dose does not “represent a sustainable long-term strategy.” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, whose company manufactures the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine, expressed similar doubts about the approval of a fourth dose Monday, saying that a fourth dose is “something that needs to be tested.”

Key Background

Denmark reported 23,142 new Covid-19 cases Wednesday, according to Johns Hopkins University data, more than 15 times more than the country’s reported new cases on December 12 as the highly transmissible omicron variant spreads in the country. There is little existing research on the fourth dose, but the preliminary results of an Israeli study found that antibodies increased by more than 500% in people a week after the shot was administered.