2023-08-25 10:50:52
A new vaccination campaign against Covid will be launched in the fall. It will be particularly intended for people at risk. New vaccines will be available, targeting the variants that emerged this summer.
Something to bring back memories. With the start of the school year, a new vaccination campaign against Covid-19 is planned for the fall, from October 17 in mainland France, in Martinique, Guyana and Guadeloupe, and from September 6 in Mayotte. This new dose is primarily intended for people at risk, but is possible for the entire population.
“The vaccine will be open and free for all those who want it,” epidemiologist Antoine Flahault assures BFMTV.com.
“It is recommended for fragile people and available for all others,” he says again.
People over 65, pregnant women and healthcare workers concerned
According to the recommendations made by the High Authority for Health (HAS), the new vaccine is recommended for all people aged 65 and over, for all people aged at least 6 months with comorbidities (complicated arterial hypertension, cardiac, vascular, hepatic, renal, pulmonary, diabetes, obesity, cancers, transplant patients, people with trisomy 21 or psychiatric disorders or dementia) and for immunocompromised people.
Added to this are pregnant women and people living in nursing homes and long-term care units, nursing staff, as well as all people in regular contact with individuals at risk. People over 80, immunocompromised and people at very high risk are advised to do another booster in the spring of 2024.
If you are in good health, you can get vaccinated “if you have fragile relatives” says doctor Antoine Flahault. “Some people cannot afford persistent forms of Covid,” he adds, referring to long Covids which can be disabling in personal and professional life.
To be vaccinated, do not forget that it is essential to respect a minimum period of 6 months after the last injection or after the last Covid infection.
“Not related to incidence rate”
Why this new campaign? “There is no indication today that the population is seeing a drop in its immunity”, recognizes Antoine Flahault.
“The (vaccine) recommendation is not linked to the incidence rate, since it dates from February, it is linked to the fact that the virus is expected to return in successive waves”, explains- he.
A situation all the more likely with the start of the school year, a “period conducive to the spread of the virus in schools in particular”, indicates the epidemiologist.
“Avoid overloading hospitals”
“We must at all costs avoid an overload for hospitals which are already sick themselves”, abounds with BFMTV.com the epidemiologist at the Lille University Hospital Philippe Amouyel.
“Hospitals will not be able to hold out if there is a conjunction between the flu and the Covid. We really have to do prevention,” he argues. In the line of sight in particular the triple epidemic of Covid-bronchiolitis-flu which saturated hospitals last winter. The vaccination campaign against the flu will also be coupled this year with that against Covid, while the two vaccines are recommended for people aged 65 and over.
New vaccines that target new variants
For this upcoming campaign, new vaccines will be made available to patients. Among them, two Messenger RNA vaccines, recommended as first-line treatment, one produced by the Pfizer laboratory, the other by Moderna. A third vaccine, launched by the Novavax laboratory, should also be offered. Finally, Comirnaty vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech will be recommended for those under 30 years old.
The first two vaccines are “bivalent” vaccines which “contain antigens for the XBB.1.5 virus, father of Eris”, explains Philippe Amouyel. With these new vaccines, the vaccine campaign intends to target in particular this sub-variant of Omicron which “is becoming the majority in Europe”, as the doctor points out.
If the start of the vaccination campaign is currently set for October 17 in mainland France in particular, this could change, according to epidemiologist Philippe Amouyel. “There is no point in vaccinating earlier given the trend, but if ever there is a peak at the start of the school year, it will start at the beginning of October in my opinion,” he says.
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