Covid-19: HAS recommends reducing the vaccine booster period to 3 months and opening it to fragile adolescents<

Faced with the fifth wave of the Covid-19 epidemic and while the particularly contagious Omicron variant is spreading in France, the High Authority for Health (HAS) recommends that the booster dose of vaccine can be carried out from three months. While waiting to examine this opinion, the Ministry of Health indicated in the process that the period would be reduced to 4 months from now (and not from January 3 as initially planned). Until then, the deadline for the booster dose was 5 months after the previous injection.

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"Like several countries, the HAS recommends that the administration of a booster dose can now be carried out from 3 months after the primary vaccination in the population eligible for this booster", writes the HAS in its latest notice published on Friday. It justifies this recommendation by the fact that, according to the latest published studies, the vaccines are 80% effective for one to two months against non-severe symptomatic forms of the Omicron variant, but lose their effectiveness more quickly than with the previous variants: 34% at 4 months after primary vaccination with the Pfizer vaccine. These same data show a rise in vaccine efficacy to 75% two weeks after a booster dose.

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HAS also considered work suggesting that the very rapid administration of a booster dose to the majority of the adult population would reduce the mortality associated with Covid-19 linked to the Omicron variant by 15%. The results of two studies confirm "good tolerance" including when it is administered from 3 months after the primary vaccination, underlines the HAS. On Wednesday, the Minister of Health Olivier Véran had indicated that the booster dose would not be extended "for the moment" to adolescents.

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In its opinion, the French National Authority for Health now recommends the administration of a booster dose in 12-17 year olds suffering from immunodeficiency or a comorbidity at risk of a serious form, according to the same methods. than adults. It specifies that it will decide later on the administration of this booster dose to all adolescents, pending the results of a clinical trial conducted by Pfizer to assess the efficacy and tolerance of this booster dose in teens.