To fight against the omicron variant and its ability to escape the immune system, the authorities have decided to speed up the injection of a new dose. The High Authority for Health recommends going even faster.
It looks more and more like a headlong rush. The Ministry of Health has decided to give the possibility of a vaccination booster four months after his last injection, “from [ce vendredi]” Minister Olivier Véran reported on Twitter, and not from January 3 as initially planned. At the end of November, the deadline for the third dose had already been reduced from six to five months, in order to speed up the vaccination campaign.
In parallel, the High Authority of Health (HAS) recommends that the vaccine booster dose can be accessible three months after the last injection, according to a notice published in the morning. This HAS directive is part of the new speed race between the vaccination campaign and the omicron variant.
According to the latest published studies, the vaccines are 80% effective for one to two months against the non-serious symptomatic forms of the new variant, but lose their effectiveness more quickly than with the previous ones: 34% at four months after a primary vaccination with the Pfizer vaccine. These same data show a rise in vaccine efficacy to 75% two weeks after a booster dose.
The HAS also considered work suggesting that the very rapid administration of a booster dose to the majority of the adult population would reduce the mortality associated with Covid-19 linked to the omicron variant by 15%. The results of two studies confirm “Good tolerance” at injection including when it is administered as early as three months after the primary vaccination.
This announcement comes against a backdrop of increased contamination with the spread of the more contagious omicron variant. 90,000 new cases were identified Thursday in France, an absolute record since the start of the epidemic in March 2020.
The generalized recall among teens?
In addition, in its opinion on Friday, the High Authority for Health now recommends the administration of a booster dose in 12-17 year olds suffering from immunodeficiency or a serious risk comorbidity, according to the same modalities as adults.
It specifies that it will decide later on the administration of this booster to all adolescents, pending the results of a clinical trial conducted by Pfizer to assess the efficacy and safety of this booster dose in teens.
But on Wednesday, the boss of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, tempered this craze for the booster dose. He thus declared “That no country will be able to get out of the pandemic with booster doses”, stressing that these reminders will only be effective if there is greater access to vaccination throughout the world.
While 20 million French people have currently received their third dose, the health pass will be conditioned on the booster dose for all people over the age of 18 from January 15. If the government follows the recommendation of the HAS, appointments are therefore likely to fly away again in the coming days.