2023-08-17 12:32:23
While the Covid-19 is picking up slightly this summer, vaccination reminders for the disease will begin on September 6 in Mayotte then on October 17 in mainland France, Guadeloupe, Martinique and Guyana.
Public Health France also announced on August 11 that it would continue to monitor the epidemic because a slight increase in contamination was observed in the first week of August. In the emergency room, visits for suspicion of Covid increased by 31% the week from July 31 to August 6 compared to the previous one, concerning 920 patients.
Who are the people targeted by this vaccination campaign?
The High Authority for Health (HAS) is clear: people at risk are called upon to be vaccinated. Concretely, these are people aged 65 and over, people with comorbidities, pregnant women, immunocompromised people, people in regular contact with immunocompromised or vulnerable people, including professionals in the health and medico-social sectors. .
The people prioritized for flu vaccination are almost the same as those prioritized for vaccination against Covid-19. But people with psychiatric disorders, dementia or trisomy 21 are also targeted for vaccination against Covid-19, which is not the case for the flu.
The HAS no longer necessarily recommends that people who are not considered “at risk” administer a booster dose, but if a person who is not targeted wishes to be vaccinated, they can still do so for free.
What vaccines will be given to patients?
The Covid-19 vaccination campaign will be coupled with that of the flu. The HAS therefore specifies that the two injections can be performed at the same time and in two separate places (for example, one injection in each arm).
Bivalent messenger RNA vaccines, adapted to the Omicron variant, will be recommended for this booster, regardless of the vaccine previously administered. For people under the age of thirty, it is recommended to receive Pfizer vaccines.
What is the new variant?
Eris, or EG.5, is a sub-variant of Omicron and it is beginning to impose itself in France and in more than fifty countries, in particular due to the summer context where large gatherings are frequent. It has been classified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as “to be continued”.
To better match the mutations of the virus, the pharmaceutical groups Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna and Novavax are now preparing vaccines specifically targeting Omicron and its subvariants. It remains to be seen whether they will be available in the fall.
This Eris subvariant appears to be more transmissible than others in circulation, probably due to new genetic mutations, and perhaps more capable of evading immune defences. More than 17% of Covid cases identified worldwide in mid-July fell under EG.5 (+7.6% over one month), according to the WHO.
So far, “the available evidence does not suggest that EG.5 poses additional public health risks compared to other circulating Omicron progeny lines,” according to the WHO.
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