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PARIS (Reuters) – France’s top health advisory body recommended on Saturday doubling the time between people receiving the first and second COVID-19 vaccines to six weeks from three in order to increase the number of vaccines.
The gap between the first and the second injection in France is currently three weeks for people in nursing homes, who have priority, and four weeks for others, such as healthcare workers.
The Haute Autorite de Sante (HAS) said that spacing the two required vaccines of the Pfizer / BioNtech and Moderna vaccines would allow the treatment of at least 700,000 more people in the first month.
“The increasing number of infections and the worrying arrival of new variants require an acceleration of the vaccination campaign to prevent the epidemic from escalating in the coming weeks,” the HAS said in a statement.
The HAS said that while there is no agreement between different countries on the optimal time interval between the two injections, it seemed reasonable to delay the second injection to six weeks, as the first injection would already provide protection against the coronavirus from day 12. or 14 after. the injection.
He added that it was essential for people to receive a second injection.
HAS is an independent advisory body whose recommendations can inform government policy but are not automatically translated into action.
The World Health Organization said earlier this month that people should receive two doses of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine within 21 to 28 days.
Several countries are considering ways to expand scarce COVID-19 vaccine supplies, including delaying dosing intervals or reducing dose sizes.
In Britain, regulators have ruled that injections can be given up to 12 weeks apart, although a group of British doctors have written to England’s medical director to tell him to bridge the gap between the doses of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine. to six weeks.
Pfizer and BioNTech have cautioned that they have no evidence that their vaccine continues to protect if the second dose is given more than 21 days after the first.
(Reporting by Geert De Clercq and Caroline Pailliez; Editing by David Holmes)
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