2023-09-17 06:00:45
A patient is vaccinated against the coronavirus, in Paris, July 7, 2021. SARAH MEYSSONNIER / REUTERS
The announcement may have come as a surprise, but it will reassure populations vulnerable to respiratory infections. For these fragile people, in fact, the vaccination campaign against Covid-19 has been brought forward to October 2, the Minister of Health, Aurélien Rousseau, told AFP on Friday September 15. Until then, the prevailing date was October 17, for a combined administration of the vaccine targeting Covid-19 and the vaccine targeting seasonal flu. This is what the High Authority for Health (HAS) recommended again on July 10.
But the SARS-CoV-2 virus, thwarting these expectations, decided otherwise. “I have just received Professor Brigitte Autran [présidente du Comité de veille et d’anticipation des risques sanitaires, ou Covars], who gave me the opinion of September 15 recommending opening vaccination more quickly to vulnerable people more directly exposed to the virus”, declared the Minister of Health. A week earlier, he had requested insight from this committee of experts.
The government therefore decided, noting this observation: “The Covid epidemic is hererecalled Aurélien Rousseau to AFP. The incidence is thought to have increased by around thirty percent since last week “, even if these figures are to be taken “with great caution”, he added, since the virus surveillance systems, since July 1, have been considerably reduced.
Read also: The vaccination campaign against Covid-19 brought forward to October 2 as the circulation of the virus increases in France
But it is not so much the resumption of the epidemic since mid-summer that concerns experts. The number of new infections remains contained to date. Moreover, “There is currently no massive increase in hospitalizations”notes Covars.
“Immune escape”
What is worrying is rather the arrival of new sub-variants of SARS-CoV-2 with a unique capacity to thwart our immune defenses – defenses laboriously acquired, for almost three years, through vaccine injections. and infections. “This ability to escape from the immune system is what bothers us the mostexplains Brigitte Autran. The immune response that we have accumulated, in particular against the BA.4 and BA.5 variants over the past year, does not protect us well against the variants which are currently circulating. »
In fact, most people hospitalized or in intensive care for Covid-19 today show very weak immune responses to these current variants. Most of them, unsurprisingly, are also fragile patients, because they are elderly or suffer from chronic pathologies, “which reinforces the need for appropriate protection measures for these populations”notes Covars.
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