They arrive at the right time for the new booster vaccination campaign planned for the fall and coupled with that against the flu. The High Authority for Health has given the green light to three anti-Covid vaccines adapted to Omicron, it announced in a press release on Tuesday.
This new booster dose will be recommended to people at risk of a severe form, to those around them and to caregivers. The HAS recommends “indifferently one of the three bivalent vaccines” – two developed by Pfizer / BioNTech, the third by Moderna – recently validated by the European Medicines Agency.
“Preferably” one of these vaccines as a booster
“Based on the available data and in an epidemic context marked by the majority circulation of the BA.5 sub-variant”, HAS recommends using “preferably” one of these vaccines, all with messenger RNA, for a new fall booster dose.
This recommendation applies regardless of the anti-Covid vaccine initially administered to the person. “Like seasonal influenza vaccines, updated each year to take into account the viruses that are most likely to circulate during the winter, bivalent mRNA vaccines are not new vaccines but vaccines adapted to the strains circulating”, emphasizes the HAS in its press release.
Vaccinate against the flu at the same time
These are the vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech targeting the original strain of the virus and the BA.1 variant of Omicron, and the vaccine from Pfizer/BioNTech targeting the original strain and the BA subvariants .4 and BA.5 from Omicron.
The HAS is also maintaining its recommendation to combine the booster vaccination campaign against Covid-19 with that of vaccination against influenza, which will start on October 18. A concomitant injection or the same day of the two vaccines is possible, she recalls.
Quick doses
“In the immediate term and because the number of cases of infections has started to rise again for a few days”, this health authority recommends not to postpone the second booster dose in people over 60 years old.
But also in people under 60 at risk of a severe form who have not received it within the recommended time frame. It recalls the effectiveness of current vaccines (monovalent) against severe forms of Covid-19.