On August 17, the immunologist Brigitte Autran, HIV specialist, former practitioner at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital and professor emeritus at Sorbonne-University, was appointed head of the new committee for monitoring and anticipating health risks. This committee takes over, with expanded missions, from the Scientific Council and the Vaccine Strategy Orientation Council (COSV), which ceased their activities on July 31. Maintenance
In France, 50 people still die of Covid-19 every day in hospital. The epidemic has become commonplace, while globally, the bar of one million deaths for the year 2022 alone was crossed the week of August 22. In total, the pandemic has killed nearly 6.5 million people. How do you see the situation in the coming weeks?
Experts are all confident that there will be a recovery in the fall, perhaps when temperatures drop. For the moment, like most countries, we are in the bottom of the wave. It’s hard to believe that a new wave will fall on us next week. But you have to be very careful. For the past few days, the decline in the circulation of the virus has slowed down.
Faced with this expected resurgence, what are your priorities?
Vaccination remains a pillar in the fight once morest this pandemic. The booster (fourth injection in most cases) now concerns all people over 60, pregnant women, people under 60 at risk of serious forms (immunocompromised people or people with comorbidities such as cancer or chronic kidney disease) and those close to fragile people. I really insist that this fourth injection be done as soon as possible. This booster is recommended from six months following the last dose, or from three months for people aged 80 and over, residents of nursing homes and long-term care units (USLD) and immunocompromised people. Repeating the vaccination every three to six months did not induce any deleterious effect. In addition, effective treatments are available for frail people and should be used.
People at risk should not wait! All current vaccines continue to provide very effective protection once morest severe forms
What do you expect from the upcoming arrival of new vaccines « bivalents”, which target both the historic strain of the virus (the one that raged at the end of 2019 in Wuhan, China) and the Omicron variant (in its first version, BA.1)?
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