CORONAVIRUS: GREEN LIGHT IN FRANCE FOR NOVAVAX VACCINE
PARIS (Reuters) – France’s High Authority for Health (HAS) considers Novavax’s nuvaxovid and Janssen’s Covid-19 Janssen vaccines, which use classic adenovirus technology, to be an effective alternative to messenger RNA vaccines for people reluctant to this type of vaccines and those who cannot benefit from them, she said in a notice published on Friday.
The HAS issued this opinion as a bill establishing a vaccination pass in France is currently being examined in Parliament and should come into force during the course of next week, effectively excluding unvaccinated people from many places and activities.
According to the latest available data, just over 5 million French people are not vaccinated against COVID-19 at all, i.e. 7.5% of the population over the age of 12, but only a small minority of them would be genuinely anti-vaccination, with many others mostly concerned about the possible side effects of the Pfizer and Moderna messenger RNA vaccines currently being administered.
“HAS recommends favoring mRNA vaccines for primary vaccination and for booster vaccination: they are very effective, their immunogenicity (the immune response against the virus) is better than that of adenovirus vaccines for booster vaccination and the perspective on their use is significant,” a statement read.
“But, when people do not wish or cannot receive this type of vaccine, HAS considers that the Nuvaxovid® vaccines from Novavax and Covid-19 from Janssen represent an additional option”, says HAS, stressing the importance of supplementing coverage for the primary vaccination and to accelerate the booster campaign in the context of an epidemic outbreak linked to the Omicron variant.
In detail, the HAS recalls that the Janssen vaccine should be reserved for people aged 55 and over, at the rate of two doses spaced two months apart, due to rare side effects previously identified in younger people.
Nuvaxovid® from Novavax, the last of the five vaccines authorized in France and in the European Union, can for its part be administered to all unvaccinated people, those who have only received a first injection, or for the dose of recall, at the rate of two doses spaced three weeks apart, underlines the HAS.
According to a count stopped on January 11, 2022, 90.2% of the eligible population (i.e. 52.1 million French people) had received a complete primary vaccination. Among people aged 18 and over, almost half had received a booster dose (nearly 29.5 million people).
(Written by Jean-Stéphane Brosse and Tangi Salaün, edited by Blandine Hénault and Sophie Louet)