Pr Jean-François Delfraissy, Chairman of the Scientific Council, expects “a fourth wave” of the Covid-19 epidemic at the start of the school year, but it will be “much more nuanced than the three” previous ones, due to the level of vaccination of population. “I believe that we will have a fourth wave but that it will be much more nuanced than the first three, because there is a level of vaccination which is not at all the same”, declared Wednesday the professor on France Inter, who qualifies recent good figures on the incidence of the virus as “falsely reassuring” because of the presence of the Delta variant, which is extremely contagious.
However, the vaccine is effective “when we have had two injections” (for vaccines which require two injections) and it is not “when we have had a single injection”, he emphasizes. “Hence the message, you have to get vaccinated” and “have had your two injections for the start of the school year”. Asked about the relevance of a third dose for the most fragile or the oldest people, Jean-François Delfraissy said that we “did not yet have extremely solid scientific data on this”.
Towards the vaccination obligation for nursing staff
But “the bottom of my thought is that it will take a third dose to stimulate an immune system which is a little weak when you are a certain age, for people over 60 or 70 years old”, a- he said. “A third dose will probably be considered from the fall,” he said.
The professor also indicated that he “changed his mind” on the issue of compulsory vaccination for caregivers. “I was against the obligation but it seems to me that now we have reached the level where we will have to consider an obligation. In my eyes, a lot is being played out right now, ”said the immunologist.