NRW tightens Coronavirus regulations When do people with the Johnson & Johnson jab count as boostered?
Bonn · One shot was enough for complete immunisation with Johnson & Johnson. But a timely booster is recommended. Now there’s a new regulation on whether a second shot counts as a booster in North Rhine-Westphalia.
"A booster vaccination is the best protection against the Omicron variant," Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) recently explained. Meanwhile (as of 16 January), almost 39 million people in Germany have received their booster shot, which is about 47 percent of the population.
The term booster vaccination, or Booster, is actually the colloquial term for a third shot. So what about people who got the Johnson & Johnson vaccine as their basic protection? According to the Paul Ehrlich Institute, this one shot is sufficient for complete basic immunisation. The Standing Commission on Vaccination, on the other hand, advises "optimising basic immunisation with the Covid-19 Vaccine Janssen with an additional dose of an mRNA vaccine." In other words, anyone who has been vaccinated with Johnson & Johnson should get an additional shot with an mRNA vaccine (Biontech or Moderna) at the earliest four weeks after vaccination.
So what’s true? At first glance, the two statements seem to contradict each other. In the new Corona Protection Ordinance for North Rhine-Westphalia, the state government has clarified the regulations that apply to persons vaccinated with Johnson & Johnson.
Johnson & Johnson: When are vaccinated persons considered to have received their booster sho?
The NRW Coronavirus Protection Ordinance explicitly states: "A person who has received a total of three vaccinations with a vaccine approved in the European Union has an effective booster vaccination in accordance with this ordinance." This is followed by: "this also applies to any combination with the Janssen (Johnson & Johnson) COVID-19 vaccine”.
This means that people who first had the Johnson & Johnson shot followed by an additional vaccination are not considered to be “boostered”. In other words, in NRW, if you got the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, you need to get two additional “booster” shots.
This tightens the Coronavirus regulations in NRW with regard to Johnson & Johnson. Previously, one additional shot was sufficient for you to be considered as “boostered”, and you didn’t have to provide negative tests as part of the 2G-plus rule. This changed when the new Coronavirus Protection Regulation came into force yesterday.
Originalartikel: Sandra Liermann
Translation: Jean Lennox
