2024-10-14 20:39:00
Getting vaccinated against flu and Covid at the same time: here’s the “annual reflex” that the health authorities hope to create in France, especially for people at risk, who are still insufficiently protected, at the start of the vaccination season, Tuesday 15 October.
One of the biggest challenges is“Let’s anchor the double flu-Covid vaccination” AS “double protection for priority audiences”summed up Sarah Sauneron, deputy director general of Health, during a press conference on Monday. Doctors, nurses, midwives and even pharmacists can give the two injections, which can be administered consecutively, without this being mandatory.
More than 17.2 million French people are particularly invited to get vaccinated against these two viral pathologies which, in some cases, can have fatal consequences. The categories targeted as a priority risk developing serious forms: those over 65, residents in nursing homes, people of all ages suffering from certain chronic diseases or severe obesity, pregnant women. Vaccination is also recommended for healthcare workers and those around vulnerable people (elderly, newborns, etc.).
If the seasonal return of influenza is well known, Covid-19, the cause of several epidemic waves every year, has added a health risk to the autumn-winter period, where other respiratory viruses also circulate, such as bronchiolitis of influenza origin. The flu and Covid vaccination aims to do this “protect the most vulnerable, because it helps reduce severe cases and hospitalizations”but also to “reduce pressure on a highly strained healthcare system”underlined the representative of the Ministry of Health.
Another declared objective: to increase the level of flu vaccination of the elderly but also of caregivers, which is decreasing. “Vaccination coverage for over 65s has decreased” compared to the previous season, alerted the director general of French Public Health, Caroline Semaille, to judge this “It’s alarming because the patients hospitalized and in intensive care are those over 65”.
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This decline was also evident for older adults living in nursing homes, where flu vaccination coverage was highest last season. “the lowest value measured in recent years”observed Capucine Ulian, medical advisor to the Directorate General of Social Cohesion. Also “a little alarming” : the decline in flu vaccination among healthcare workers, including doctors (traditionally more vaccinated than nurses and healthcare workers), according to Caroline Semaille.
Against Covid, the percentage of elderly people vaccinated has increased in a year, up to around 30% last season, but “remain weak”he pointed. To explain the insufficient vaccination against flu and Covid, Sarah Sauneron cited a “Pretty well documented post-Covid vaccine fatigue and belief that vaccination doesn’t work, or doesn’t always work”.
However, Covid and flu vaccines do “well adapted to the virus strains in circulation” this season and “the benefits far outweigh the risks”with “especially pain at the injection site” as adverse effects, assured Caroline Semaille.
For Covid this year it will be a vaccine aimed at the Omicron JN.1 variant, close to the ones that have been dominant for several weeks. Initially only the Pfizer-BioNTech serum will be available.
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For influenza, three vaccines from different manufacturers, designed from strains of the virus expected to circulate most this season, can be used interchangeably. It is advisable to carry out vaccination before the active circulation of influenza viruses, because the body needs, once vaccinated, two weeks to form the necessary antibodies.
The impact of the flu and Covid in the coming months in France remains unknown. Last season, the flu returned to a trend similar to that of the pre-Covid-19 pandemic, after two years heavily affected by Covid. However, it caused 14,000 hospital admissions and more than 1,860 deaths, a figure likely lower than reality because it was based on incomplete death records.
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