Posted on September 27, 2022 at 12:26 pmUpdated on September 27, 2022 at 12:31 pm
Faced with the wave of Covid that rises in September, the health authorities put themselves in battle order. Interviewed today at “8:30 am” by franceinfo, the Minister of Health, François Braun, took the opportunity to announce the start of a new vaccination campaign.
“As of October 3, we will have a new bivalent vaccine available in pharmacies and vaccination centers against the wild strain but also against the Omicron variant,” said the Minister.
This new booster dose will be used for “fragile people, those over 60 years of age, health professionals and people who are in contact with fragile people”. If the general population is not targeted by this campaign, the vaccine will remain accessible to them, according to François Braun.
For this withdrawal campaign, the High Health Authority (HAS) recommended using one of the three vaccines adapted to the Omicron subvariants (two from Pfizer/BioNTech, one from Moderna), recently approved by the European Medicines Agency, and combining it with the one against the flu, which will begin on October 18.
One of these vaccines, developed by Moderna, is suitable for BA.1. The first bottles ordered must be delivered between September 29 and October 4, according to a recent message sent by the ministry to health professionals, citing only 576,000 doses available at the start.
François Braun also took the opportunity to recall the importance of barrier gestures in the face of the increase in Covid cases. “When we are on top of each other, it is more reasonable to put on the mask. When you are with a very fragile person, you put on the mask”, he underlined, inviting citizens to show “common sense”.
Increase in confirmed contaminations
Asked about the increase in contamination, the minister confirmed “a resumption of the circulation of the virus” for three weeks. As shown the latest figures from Public Health France indicating a 43.5% increase in positive cases in the last seven days. In addition, the Omicron variant is sequenced in 100% of the tests performed.
The health authority also indicates that these crossed the symbolic bar of one million last week. That hadn’t happened for at least six weeks, and August hit its lowest level in two years.
On the virus-related hospitalization side, there is no panic at the moment for Public Health France, which remains vigilant anyway. As of September 22, they had increased 8% in seven days, reaching 2,519 people.