the High Authority for Health in favor of a new booster dose for people over 65 at risk

Will you need to receive a new injection against Covid-19? The High Authority for Health (HAS) is in favor of access to a “second reminder” vaccine for people over 65 at risk of severe form of the disease, in a notice published Friday, March 18. The authority considers that this new dose (the fourth in most cases) must be “reserved” to this category and offered only to people “who wish”.

She advises respecting an interval of at least six months with the previous booster dose, “so as not to reduce the adherence of the population to vaccination by too frequent reminders”.

This second reminder has already been open since Saturday to people over 80 and to residents of nursing homes, whether or not they have specific risk factors. It will not be necessary to keep the sanitary pass. Patients must have received their previous injection more than three months ago, a shorter period than that recommended by the HAS. This had been seized by the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran. She says “[prendre] act of government announcement”.

Finally, the HAS insists on the fact that it is not “relevant” to open the fourth dose to the entire population, due to a lack of data on its effectiveness and its necessity and out of concern for the “issues of acceptability”. Its European counterpart, the European Medicines Agency (EMA), took a similar position on Thursday.

The French authority has also communicated other recommendations. She now considers it possible to vaccinate children who have suffered from a pediatric multi-system inflammatory syndrome (PIMS). In addition, it wishes to extend the use of a preventive treatment, Evusheld from AstraZeneca, to all immunocompromised patients in whom vaccination does not work well, including adolescents over 12 years of age.