In a press release published on Friday, December 24, the High Authority for Health (HAS) issued a double recommendation: open the booster dose to fragile adolescents aged 12 to 17 years and reduce the time between booster shots to three months.
In order to counter the proliferation of the Omicron variant in France, the HAS stressed the need to speed up the vaccination campaign. For this, two measures have been proposed: reducing the delay from 5 to 3 months between the first vaccine dose and the booster, as well as access to booster injections for adolescents 12 to 17 years old with co-morbidities.
Reduced time between reminders
The HAS followed the advice of the National Agency for Medicines and Health Products Safety (ANSM) by recommending that the French government reduce the time limit to 3 months between booster doses in a press release published on Friday.
Before examining this proposal, the Ministry of Health announced the reduction of this period from 5 to 4 months from this Friday, instead of January 3 as initially planned.
To define this recommendation, the HAS relied on real-life studies indicating that the vaccines are 80% effective against the non-serious symptomatic forms linked to the Omicron variant after one to two months following the booster. This efficacy dropped to 34% four months after a booster injection while it increased to 75% two weeks after receiving a booster dose.
According to the mathematical modeling work carried out by the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), while waiting at least three months for the administration of a vaccine booster dose, the mortality linked to the Omicron variant would drop by 15 %.
This study corroborated that carried out by the Institut Pasteur, indicating that the increase in the vaccination rate from 800,000 injections to 1.2 million would reduce the peak of hospitalizations from 9 to 17%.
Access to the booster dose for frail adolescents
Given the epidemic situation linked to the dissemination of the Omicron variant, data which confirms a drop in vaccine efficacy, the ANSM has issued an opinion in which it considers that the administration of a booster dose in adolescents fragile can be considered.
On this point, the HAS also followed the recommendation of the ANSM by suggesting that the French executive open the administration of reminders to adolescents 12 to 17 years old with comorbidities or suffering from immunodeficiency.
The Haute Autorité de santé has recommended the possibility for doctors specializing in organs and rare diseases to administer boosters to this target population.
With regard to perfectly healthy adolescents of this age, the HAS will subsequently rule on the need for the administration of this booster. To do this, she will wait for the results of the clinical trial currently being conducted by Pfizer on this subject and will be able to determine the appropriate amount of the dose necessary for the booster of this age group.