(Ottawa) The National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) now strongly recommends booster shots of the COVID-19 vaccine to people over 50 years of age.
The advisory group also reinforced its recommendation for several other groups and now strongly suggests boosters for people who have received a full series of doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca or Janssen vaccine, First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities, and workers in frontline health.
The new recommendations follow an urgent request from the federal government on the role of booster doses in the fight against the new variant Omicron.
The new variant was revealed late last week and triggered stricter border measures around the world, as the World Health Organization warns its high number of mutations could indicate it is more transmissible than previous strains.