All French people over the age of 18 can have their Covid-19 vaccine booster since the beginning of December.
Children aged 5 to 11 should be able to make their first injection on Wednesday.
Adolescents - some of whom have been vaccinated for five or six months - have a lot of social contact but are not currently among the people who can receive a third dose.
Health authorities are working on the issue and should give their opinion in early 2022.
Since the beginning of December, all French people over the age of 18 can do a booster dose of the Covid-19 vaccination.
And from tomorrow, Wednesday, December 21, the vaccination campaign will be extended to all children from 5 to 11 years old.
Provided that the Orientation Council for the vaccine strategy gives the green light this Tuesday, after the positive opinion of the High Authority for Health on Monday.
There remains a hole in the racket: the teenagers.
Indeed, a large part of them received a first and then a second dose in the summer.
So, what about the recall campaign?
20 Minutes
takes stock.
How many adolescents have a full immunization schedule?
According to figures from the Ministry of Health on Tuesday, 4 million French people between the ages of 12 and 17 received one or two doses, or 79% of adolescents.
What is the point of recalling for adolescents?
Adolescents have been vaccinated for some since June, so for six months.
However, we now know that protection against Covid-19 drops five or six months after a full vaccination schedule.
In addition, the arrival of the Omicron variant, twice as contagious as the Delta variant, raises fears of the worst for the coming weeks.
And the 12-17 year olds have a lot of social contacts… and without doubt more difficult to respect to the letter all the barrier gestures after eighteen months of crisis.
This is why many parents are surprised that their teens are not yet eligible for the recall campaign.
If 3 doses is the complete mRNA vaccination schedule (and protection with 2 doses possibly extinguished by Omicron which will surge), why the 3rd dose is not accessible to 12-17 year olds, some of whom have had their D2 from July, so 5 months ago?
🤷🏻♂️ @ C_A_Gustave
- nemo 💉 (@why_not_nemo) December 19, 2021
Especially since these minors participate enormously in the fifth wave.
According to figures from Public Health France, the incidence rate was among 10-19 year olds, between December 6 and 12, at 624 cases per 10,000 inhabitants.
Either before the Omicron surge ...
When might the recall campaign be open to teens?
“For now, 12-17 year olds are not affected by the recall campaign because the marketing authorization for Pfizer only provides for recall from the age of 18,” recalls the Ministry of Health.
But it is a subject on which we are working with the health authorities.
"
The High Authority for Health was in fact approached by the ministry to issue an opinion on the possibility of extending the third dose to 12-17 year olds.
And on the question of the deadline: will we have to wait four or six months?
"The work is in progress and we should give our opinion at the beginning of the year 2022", specifies the HAS.
In addition, "the National Agency for the Safety of Medicines and Health Products was also informed about the benefit / risk ratio of the booster vaccination of people aged 12 to 17 years", adds the Ministry of Health.
With which vaccine would teen boosters be made?
Only from Pfizer.
After a primary vaccination campaign where adolescents could receive Pfizer or Moderna, the High Authority of Health recommended on November 8 to prioritize Pfizer for those under 30, because of the risk of myocarditis.
"In the population under 30, this risk appears to be about 5 times lower for Pfizer's Comirnaty vaccine compared to Moderna's Spikevax vaccine in 12-29 year olds, an age group for which the excess of cases per million is the highest (131.6 per million cases for Moderna against 26.7 for Pfizer) ”, wrote the HAS in November.
And not Novavax?
If this vaccine has just been authorized by the European Medicines Agency (EMA), it will only be used for the primary vaccination, and only for people over 18 years of age.
On the other hand, the question of recalling teenagers with a pediatric Pfizer vaccine, three times less dosed than that for adults, arises.
"The reminders for 12-17 year olds would be done a priori with an adult dose, but the opinions of the HAS and the National Agency for the Safety of Medicines and Health Products are awaited in order to confirm this point", replies us the Directorate General of Health.
Will there be enough doses?
Currently obtaining Pfizer vaccine is already relatively complicated. So if the recall campaign were to include the 4 million adolescents already vaccinated, there could be increased pressures on these doses. "Assuming that the authorities tell us to vaccinate 12-17 year olds as a booster, we have the doses available, reassures the ministry. In our models, we integrate potentially expected decisions. If we had the scientific green light, we would have something to do. "
By putting the nose in the figures, one realizes that the orders of vaccines are indeed bloated. France expects, still according to the ministry, 11.8 million doses of Pfizer in January, 10.8 million in February and 9.8 million in March. "From the first week of January, 4.2 million Pfizer doses should be received," says the entourage of Olivier Véran. In addition, there would remain, according to the ministry's calculations, 24 million French people to whom a booster dose must be administered by January 15. "We have 20 million doses [Pfizer and Moderna] in stock," continues the ministry.
Finally, there is the question of the arms to vaccinate.
In order not to slow down the current cruising speed (957,000 vaccinations last Friday, a record since the start of the campaign), the government is mobilizing other professionals who will be able to vaccinate in the coming weeks: soldiers, firefighters, rescuers trained in vaccination.
To see if this will be enough to win the "race against time" against the Covid-19, in the words of Jean Castex.
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Vaccination
Teenager
Covid 19
Anti-covid vaccine
Coronavirus
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