The Quebec Immunization Committee (CIQ) verbally transmitted to the government its recommendations on vaccination against COVID-19 in the fall. Its president, the DD Caroline Quach-Thanh, is careful not to reveal them before their official publication, but indicates that “the CIQ’s vision has always aimed, in the case of COVID and influenza, to prevent serious infections, including complications and deaths” among populations most at risk.
Among the groups usually targeted are the elderly, people aged 5 or over who are immunosuppressed, on dialysis or have “underlying medical conditions”, as well as health care workers “who can be a transmission belt to their clientele. more vulnerable”, recalls the DD Quach-Thanh.
Last spring, the CIQ recommended a booster dose of the COVID-19 vaccine “for high-risk individuals who have not yet been infected and whose last dose was at least 6 months ago”.
“This fall, what we know is that there will be a new vaccine which will be updated according to the variants which circulate, says the DD Quach-Thanh. It is expected that the vaccine that will be available in the United States will also be available in Canada. »
A group of US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisors recently voted in favor of updating a COVID-19 vaccine targeting XBB subvariants, preferably XBB.1.5. In Quebec, the latter accounted for 34.6% of infections between June 25 and 1er July, according to the National Institute of Public Health of Quebec (INSPQ). XBBs, in general, made up 86% of cases.
The doctor therefore invites Quebecers at risk to “not rush in August” to obtain a booster dose. The new vaccine will not yet be available. “If it’s been 6 months since you had your last vaccination, wait for the arrival of the modified vaccine,” she advises.
XBBs are subvariants of Omicron “that have mutated enough that our immunity, due to vaccination or infection, no longer recognizes them,” explains Dr.D Quach-Thanh. They cause the same symptoms as those that circulated before: great fatigue, myalgia, fever, cough, sore throat, etc. “It looks like a respiratory virus like influenza,” she notes.
A booster dose for all, says NACI
In an advisory issued Tuesday, the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) recommended that Canadians receive a dose of the new formulation of the COVID-19 vaccine “if at least six months have passed since the last dose of the vaccine against COVID-19 or from known infection with SARS-CoV-2”.
The DD Quach-Thanh believes for his part that “the dose can be offered to everyone because it is safe, but that we will really have to, as with influenza, focus our efforts to reach and make available the dose of reminder for people who are in the groups that we have identified as priority and most vulnerable”.