In a notice published Friday, December 24, the HAS paves the way for the administration of a booster dose from three months after the complete vaccination scheme, instead of the five recommended.
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Faced with the progression of the Omicron Variant, the High Health Authority (HAS) tightens the mesh of the vaccinal net. In a notice published Friday, December 24, the High Authority paves the way for the administration of the recall dose from three months after the complete vaccination scheme, instead of the five months necessary so far. At the same time, it recommends the administration of this booster dose to children aged 12 to 17 with pathological or drug immunodeficiency, or comorbidities increasing the likelihood of developing serious forms of COVID-19.
The HAS bases its opinion on data acquired in “real life”, particularly in the United Kingdom, Israel and France, but also on modeling work. Of British studies – No Still formally published – in particular suggest that the Pfizer vaccine maintains, during the two months after the second dose, protection of the order of 80% against the non-severe symptomatic forms due to the Omicron variant.
But the same works also suggest a drop in this rate of protection to about 34% from the fourth month, and a rise to about 75% from two weeks after the third dose. Prudent, the has noted that the duration of this level of protection is to date unknown.
The non-vaccinated overrepresented at the hospital
To establish its recommendation, the authority also relies on the projections of the Pasteur Institute. These modeling work of the effects of different vaccine strategies indicate that an elevation of the 31-dose administration pace – 1.2 million injections per day, instead of the daily 800,000 at the time of writing. – could “reduce the size of the peak of hospitalizations between 9% and 17%”.
The collected data of the Research Directorate, Studies, Evaluation and Statistics (DREES) provide an idea of the decline, with time, the level of protection offered by vaccination, against the delta variant. Between mid-October and mid-November, “For people with full scheme for six months or more, the protection against serious forms (conventional critical care hospitalizations) decreased to about 80%, losing 10 points for 60 to 80. years “, considers the has in his opinion. At six months after the second dose, this protection loses between 5 and 10 points for more than 80 years, with respect to the protection conferred at three months, according to the same data.
The raw data of the DREES circulates intensely on the web, where they are the subject of various interpretations. HAS recalls in its opinion that despite the decline in vaccine efficiency over time and the occurrence of new variants, people who have not completed their vaccinal scheme remain overrepresented among the patients and the deaths of COVID-19 . Between early November and early December, the non-vaccinated accounted for only 9% of the French population of 20 years and over, but they had 41% of hospitalizations, 52% of critical care entries and 38% of deaths.