As France faces an 8th epidemic wave of Covid-19, “less than 50%” people over 60 “made their second encore”, has affirmed on franceinfo Monday, October 3 Elisabeth Bouvet president of the Technical Commission for vaccinations at the High Authority for Health. “We have to fix that”, she added.
>>> Covid-19: public concerned, conditions of access… What you need to know about the new vaccination campaign which starts on Monday
A new vaccination campaign against Covid-19 begins this Monday with vaccines “bivalent” suitable for Omicron variants. As the epidemic resumption is confirmed in France, the over 60s, vulnerable people and caregivers are called upon to receive a new dose of vaccine, i.e. 17 million people. An expansion of the public is not envisaged for the moment.
franceinfo: qWhat is the proportion of eligible French people who have not yet made this reminder?
Elizabeth Bouvet: We are only less than 50% who have made their second reminder. It hasn’t changed much in recent weeks. So, obviously, this needs to be corrected since there is currently a new epidemic wave. People are further and further away from their last booster, risk factors and vulnerability to Covid-19 still affect the same people, it is really time to carry out a new booster with appropriate vaccines.
When should you get vaccinated?
It’s been a general rule since the beginning, it’s better not to do the vaccination right after the Covid-19 because it may not be as effective as it could be. And in addition, it is not useful since just after the Covid-19 we are protected. It is recommended to wait three months before giving an injection.
For those who have followed the complete vaccination course, is this the fifth injection?
This will be the fifth injection. I don’t know if we should continue to talk about boosters, but rather about additional doses. It is possible that we will arrive at something regular for fragile people, that is to say to regularly, periodically give a booster injection to boost immunity against the viruses that are circulating.
Do you plan to extend this additional dose to everyone?
For the moment no, because the virus that circulates is the same, the fragile people are the same and what is really important is to protect the fragile people. It is not to vaccinate the general population which has no risk, which can of course become infected, but which will not develop serious forms. And so, for the moment, the recommendations and the strategy are to protect the fragile.
These vaccines are bivalent, ie they are effective against the traditional strain and against its Omicron variant. What does this change?
Indeed, these new vaccines contain messenger RNA from the Omicron strain and lead to the production of a higher level of antibodies against the Omicron strain. We can hope for even greater protection and longer duration. For the moment, we cannot know the duration of this protection, but we can hope that it is more important since the immunity it provides is higher than the original vaccine.
Antoine Flahault, who heads the Institute of Global Health at the University of Geneva, claims that the health authorities approved these vaccines too quickly, without any human studies having been provided by the laboratories. Is that correct?
Among the three, there is one that has been tested in humans, but not in large quantities. Of course, there were no trials like there were initial trials with the vaccines that were first used because they are the same vaccines. It is exactly the same vaccine except that it is adapted. You don’t have to do a lot of testing to check that they are well tolerated. The manufacturers very quickly made a BA5 vaccine, that is to say against the latest Omicron strains that are circulating. If we want these vaccines to be effective, they must be used when the virus is circulating. If we wait to carry out trials with large numbers of people, to prove that they will reduce the risk of infection, we will probably have to make available a vaccine that will no longer be adapted to the strain.