2023-09-27 13:32:36
If we tell you about stock shortages after ten days on the market, you think PS5, new iPhone… And you would be wrong. Far from these cutting-edge gadgets, Beyfortus is not the latest product of consumerism but a preventive treatment intended for infants. And 200,000 doses have already been sold, in just over a week. However, health authorities want to be reassuring about the availability of this treatment, sometimes wrongly presented as a vaccine.
What exactly is Beyfortus, and where can you find it? Are we already facing a shortage? How can we explain such enthusiasm for this treatment? 20 Minutes takes stock with Pierre-Olivier Variot, president of the Union of Community Pharmacists’ Unions.
What is the Beyfortus injection?
Like a vaccine, Beyfortus is injected and used to fight diseases. But where the vaccine consists of “injecting a piece of virus to induce an immune response from the body, so that it creates antibodies itself”, in the case of Beyfortus “we are already injecting the antibody”, explains Pierre-Olivier Variot. The term vaccine is therefore inadequate; rather, it should be considered as a preventative treatment. Disadvantage of the method, the protection “lasts a little less over time”. But for a disease that mainly affects toddlers under two years old, the compromise seems acceptable.
The treatment is also reserved for babies born after February 6, 2023, and who will therefore experience their first season of circulation of the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), responsible for bronchiolitis, this winter. To administer it, two cases arise. If the baby weighs less than 5 kg, “this is only done at the hospital, which will provide the product and give the injection” with a dosage reduced to 50 mg, points out the pharmacist. For babies weighing more than 5 kg, “the doctor or pediatrician will prescribe the treatment, the pharmacist places the order, and when it happens 5 to 6 days later, the doctor or pediatrician does the injection,” he explains. .
Are we really facing a shortage of Beyfortus?
The government’s first order, of 200,000 doses, was to get the campaign off to a good start. At the National Assembly on Tuesday, the minister, Aurélien Rousseau, praised an “exceptional success” and a “very high membership rate”. But it was necessary to review the availability circuit, in particular by reserving the reduced doses for hospitals. “It’s not a shortage in the sense that we wouldn’t have the doses,” reassures Pierre-Olivier Variot, who points out the “complicated delivery system.”
“We cannot keep stock,” he emphasizes, and the number of orders must therefore be strictly correlated to the number of prescriptions. Sanofi, which produces the treatment under the name nirsévimab, “had to call pharmacists back to check the needs, this delayed deliveries,” indicates Pierre-Olivier Variot. Instead of 5 to 6 days, some boxes arrived after 10 days. “For the moment, we have no shortage” of the stock managed by the State, but “given the enthusiasm” and “when we return to common law supply”, we will “maybe have be” occasional ruptures, warns the pharmacist. In addition, “we are in the process of catching up with the births of February-March”, he emphasizes, but “it will calm down” once there are only unborn babies left to treat.
How to explain such enthusiasm?
While the Covid-19 vaccine has received a lot of attention in recent years, marking the virulence of its opponents, parents’ support for bronchiolitis treatment may seem surprising. But in reality “this distrust concerned few people” and was explained by “the speed of implementation of a new vaccine”, with messenger RNA technology, analyzes Pierre-Olivier Variot. In fact, 78.7% of the French population had completed their vaccination schedule against Covid-19 by January 1, 2023, a rate in fact higher than 90% for all age groups over 18 years old. .
Another explanation may come from the virulence of the bronchiolitis epidemic last winter, which began in October in mainland France and ended in the middle of January. An “intense and prolonged” epidemic, underlines Public Health France. Hospitals thus recorded 73,262 emergency room visits, almost double the average, for 26,104 hospitalizations. “When we explain to parents the seriousness of bronchiolitis, which can put their baby in the hospital, they prefer to have treatment,” concludes Pierre-Olivier Variot. In Guadeloupe and Martinique, the virus is already circulating at a pre-epidemic stage.
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