The Minister of Health, Olivier Véran. – Ludovic MARIN / POOL / AFP
Always restricted use. The vaccination campaign with the AstraZeneca vaccine will “probably” not be extended to those under 55 in France, said Minister of Health Olivier Véran on Monday
on the LCI channel.
The High Authority for Health (HAS) decided in mid-March to restrict the use of the vaccine to people over 55 years of age because of rare cases of atypical thrombosis and coagulation disorders. Asked whether the government planned to expand the use of the vaccine to people under 55, Olivier Véran replied: “Probably not at the present time”.
Pending a response from the Haute Autorité de santé
The minister seized the HAS at the end of April to study the possibility of allowing all volunteers, whatever their age, to be vaccinated at AstraZeneca by signing a waiver. He said Monday to wait for a response from the HAS, while recalling that the president of the Council for the orientation of the vaccine strategy, Alain Fischer, was “for his part not favorable” to this option.
Olivier Véran also provided an explanation for the words of Emmanuel Macron, who said Sunday on the sidelines of a European summit that “to respond to variants, we see that other vaccines (than AstraZeneca) are now more effective “.
According to the Minister of Health, the Head of State was responding “to a question on the horizon for next year, if new variants were to emerge requiring boosters of vaccination”. In this case, “we consider at the international level that other mechanisms than AstraZeneca could be more effective more quickly”.
“A good vaccine”
Olivier Véran affirmed that for all that, this product remained a “good vaccine”, and indicated that for the single day of Friday “the (doctors, nurses, ..) liberals made 61,000 (doses of) AstraZeneca in one day” .
He also detailed the state of stocks of this vaccine by explaining that of the two million doses received by the state last week, “700,000 were ordered by private doctors, nurses, midwives”, 700 to 800,000 are set aside for a second injection and the remainder is kept for vaccination centers.