“From now on, it will be enough to be vaccinated once a year, at the same time as the flu,” explains a medical director at Pfizer

Monday October 2, a new vaccination campaign against Covid begins in France. “The recommendation of the High Authority for Health (HAS) is that from now on, it will be enough to be vaccinated once a year, at the same time as the flu.“, explains Doctor Bruno Valtier, medical director of the Messenger RNA and antiviral vaccines activity at Pfizer.

>> Researchers finally unravel the mysteries of long Covid

According to him, only certain patients should be vaccinated twice a year: “These are immunocompromised subjects and people over 80 years old“. While several variants of the coronavirus are currently circulating, mainly Eris and Pirola, Bruno Valtier recalls that the vaccine made available by Pfizer “demonstrated its effectiveness on these two variants.“

A single vaccine for Covid and the flu?

He details: “The protection provided by the vaccine diminishes over time. The Covid virus is capable of changing all the time, so there will be several vaccines that will be adapted to the new variants that are circulating.” As during the numerous waves of Covid since 2020, “vaccination reduces the risk of being contaminated, but it does not prevent it 100%“, he recalls. “The purpose of being vaccinated is to avoid developing severe forms of the disease, which lead to hospital admission or which can leave after-effects.“, adds Bruno Valtier.

Pfizer is working on the possibility of a combined vaccine against Covid and flu: “This will simplify the administration of the vaccine“, explains the specialist. “The only difficulty is that it will be necessary, every year, or even more frequently, to adapt the vaccine against Covid and that against the flu, but with messenger RNA vaccines, this is not a problem.“, this technology makes it possible to quickly change the vaccine to adapt it to different variants.