Britain: UK Covid Booster Vaccine Shots for Vulnerable Groups May Start From September - by Katharine Gemmell

The country’s independent vaccination committee recommended that the government plan to offer boosters in a two-stage program alongside the annual flu vaccination drive. The rollout will depend on further data and the guidance could change, according to the Department of Health & Social Care.

“We want to be on the front foot for Covid-19 booster vaccination,” Jonathan Van-Tam, deputy chief medical officer for England, said in a statement. The goal is to “keep the probability of loss of vaccine protection due to waning immunity or variants as low as possible, especially over the coming autumn and winter.”

The shots would first be made available to extremely vulnerable and immunosuppressed adults, those ages 70 or older, residents of elderly care homes and front-line health workers, the health department said. Those eligible in the second stage would include people over 50 and household contacts of the immunosuppressed.

The benefits of vaccinating other groups, including young adults who may not have had a second dose yet, will be evaluated at a later date.

Final recommendations from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization will be published before September, the statement said. It will consider data from a government-funded trial that is evaluating the effectiveness of different Covid-19 vaccines as booster shots, as well as any new information on the immunity levels from the current inoculation program.

Read more at: UK Covid Booster Vaccine Shots for Vulnerable Groups May Start From September - Bloomberg

The Netherlands - Cyber attacks: Digitization leaves the Netherlands vulnerable to cyber attacks: NCTV report says

The Netherlands is particularly vulnerable to IT failures and attacks because almost all vital processes and systems have been completely digitized with no analogue back-ups, the Dutch counter terrorism unit NCTV said on Wednesday.

‘The Netherlands is dependent on a limited number of providers and countries. This makes us vulnerable to changed intentions,’ the report said.

‘For example, a large part of the hard and software is designed and produced in China and the US.’ In addition, little expertise is needed to launch a cyber attack which could, for example, knock out gas, electricity and water supplies.

The best way to reduce the risks is to improve security systems. And while companies and government are taking action, they sometimes think the cost of the improvements are not worth it ‘until things go wrong,’ the NCTV said.

The biggest threats presently come from China, Russia and Iran, and a variety of hackersthe NCTV said, in a restatement of earlier reports.

Read more at: Digitization leaves the Netherlands vulnerable to cyber attacks: NCTV - DutchNews.nl - Live

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