In a document published on its website on Tuesday, the National Agency for the Safety of Medicines and Health Products (ANSM) updates the “post-vaccination surveillance” instructions for health professionals. One of the main side effects of the vaccine is the risk of “malaise”, “it is important that simple measures are put in place to avoid any injury: vaccinated people must remain lying down (on floor mats or blankets) or sitting on the floor with their backs once morest a wall in a clear space”details the agency.
Until now, according to the instructions for vaccination in college, organized since October, only monitoring of students within a quarter of an hour following the injection was recommended, without specifying in what context.
A note from the ARS (Regional Health Agency) Ile-de-France published in June explained that students had to be seated on “chairs” or “sofas”, and recommended lying down students who were feeling unwell.
This change of instructions comes following the death of a 5th grade student from Saint-Dominique college in Saint-Herblain near Nantes (Loire-Atlantique) at the end of October, following a heavy fall, the ANSM confirmed to AFP Tuesday.
The Nantes public prosecutor’s office, which opened an investigation into manslaughter, indicated to AFP that “the schoolboy, who did not feel well shortly following the injection, was seated in a chair and fell back on his head following feeling unwell.”
The ANSM specifies that post-vaccination discomfort, sometimes brief loss of consciousness, is “uncommon and quickly resolved, may correspond to a psychogenic reaction to the injection” et “may be accompanied by tremors or stiffness.”
The campaign to vaccinate middle school students in 5th grade once morest human papillomavirus (HPV), the cause of many cancers such as cervical cancer, was launched at the beginning of October in France. It is not obligatory.
