Monday, April 25, 2022, the Ministry of Health published the new vaccination schedule, which issues “general” and “specific” vaccination recommendations to the French. And some vaccines are subject to new prescriptions.
Each year, the Ministry of Health unveils the vaccination schedule, a recommendation for the French vaccines “generals” and “individuals” which are to be carried out according to the profiles, determined according to age, specific conditions, such as the risk of complication, exposure or transmission. And for his 2022 edition, some prescriptions have changed, in particular for the vaccinations recommended for infants and children. If the list of eleven compulsory vaccines for the latter has remained unchanged since 2018, some recommendations have been added to it, as for the whooping cough vaccine, which is the subject of a novelty. A contagious respiratory infection, this can be serious, even fatal for fragile people and infants.
So much so that the High Authority for Health advise pregnant women to be vaccinated from the second trimester of pregnancy. According to the HAS, the period between 20 and 36 weeks is even preferred to ensure “optimal protection of the newborn” and improve the transfer of maternal antibodies during gestation. Vaccination against invasive meningococcal infections serogroup B, which is responsible, among other things, for bacterial meningitis, is also recommended for infants from the age of two months and before the age of two years: “a first dose at three months of age, a second dose at five months of age and a booster dose at twelve months”. A vaccination which is, according to the calendar, also recommended “for the family circle of people at high risk of meningococci”with a reminder every five years.
This recommendation for the flu vaccine
Another new recommendation this time concerns vaccination against seasonal flu. While the campaign for this vaccine usually begins in late autumn, it will now be strongly advised professionals exposed to porcine and avian viruses in the workplace to get vaccinated. A “collective protection measure” according to the Ministry of Health, which sees it as a means of“avoid the transmission of human influenza viruses to animals”. However, the document clarifies that this is not a “personal protection measure against porcine and avian zoonotic viruses”. Furthermore, no stoppage of vaccine marketing has been decreed.