DECRYPTION
The Minister of Health Olivier Véran announced the opening of the vaccination against Covid-19 to all people aged 55 and over from Monday. That is almost 4 million additional people who will be able to receive a first injection. The government’s objective is still to reach the milestone of 20 million French people vaccinated by May 15, and 30 million by June 15. To achieve this, the executive has chosen to be inspired by the British method, by spacing the injections of doses of vaccines from 28 to 42 days, which should make it possible to cushion the delays announced in the delivery of certain doses.
But on the side of the scientific community, voices are now rising to demand a refocusing of vaccine policies towards the youngest, in whom the virus is actively circulating but in a more discreet manner.
Children’s vaccines have not yet been validated
Should children be vaccinated? “It is a scenario which is on the table”, replied Agnès Pannier-Runacher, the Minister for Industry at the microphone of the Big Rendezvous, Sunday on Europe 1. However, no serum is currently available for the youngest. “Today, vaccines for children are not available, because they are the subject of particular clinical trials and specific validations. It is even stricter than for adults,” she said.
On Friday evening, Pfizer-BioNTech made a request to extend the emergency authorization of its vaccine to adolescents aged 12 to 15 years.
“If you want to break the transmission chain, you have to cut it from end to end”
In the columns of Sunday newspaper, epidemiologist Antoine Flahault, director of the Institute for Global Health in Geneva, Switzerland, recalls that schools play a fundamental role in the circulation of the virus. “Their closure allowed Portugal, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Denmark to regain control,” he argues.
For the infectious disease specialist Benjamin Davido, who works at the Raymond-Poincaré hospital in Garches, this is explained by the fact that children represent an important reservoir for SARS-CoV-2, all the more formidable since it is sometimes difficult to identify. “If we want to break the chain of transmission, we have to cut it from end to end because the reservoir is in the youngest. The younger we are, the more asymptomatic we are, and the more asymptomatic we are, the more we escape testing because you don’t know you’re sick, ”he explains in Europe Midi. “I think that vaccinating children is the key to the success of vaccination,” said the doctor again.
No compulsory vaccination for children
“We are now vaccinating from an early age, at birth, against certain communicable diseases such as measles, and this is what we must be able to do with Covid-19”, maintains Benjamin Davido. Still on Europe 1, Agnès Pannier-Runacher clarified that there was no question of making this vaccination compulsory – when it will be available -, insofar as it is not for adults.
From March 22 to 28, the incidence rate of Covid-19 was up sharply compared to the previous week in all age groups, but the most significant increase was observed among 0-14 year olds (+ 31%), according to the latest detailed data from Public Health France, which indicates that the circulation of the virus is particularly active among the youngest. For his part, Benjamin Davido assures him: “80 to 90% of the population will have to be vaccinated to achieve collective immunity”.
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