Covid: what awaits us for the start of the school year?

Brigitte Autran, a new face in the fight against covid

Announced on Wednesday August 17 in an order in the Official Journal, the immunologist Brigitte Autran has been appointed president of the new “Committee for monitoring and anticipating health risks”. This body succeeds the Scientific Council, chaired by Professor Jean-François Delfraissy, created two years ago to deal with the pandemic, and which ceased to exist at the end of July, when the state of health emergency was lifted. .

As its name suggests, this monitoring committee will be tasked with keeping a watch on all health risks. His attention will not only be on covid, but also on the consequences of global warming as well as on the interactions between animals and humans.

A bivalent vaccine announced for September

The race for the most effective vaccines to protect the weakest populations against covid is still relevant. It is in this context that the United Kingdom, via the NHS National Health Service, announced the deployment of a bivalent vaccine from September 5 as part of the autumn booster programme. This bivalent vaccine, which has the advantage of targeting both the original strain and Omicron, will be deployed from the beginning of the month among residents of healthcare centers, as well as among the most vulnerable people. A wider rollout is expected to begin on September 12.

The UK has thus become the first country in the world to approve Moderna’s vaccine which targets both the original strain of COVID and the Omicron variant.

More than half of people with Omicron don’t know it

An American study published on August 17 in the JAMA Network Open claims that more than half of people infected with the omicron variant don’t know it. Of 210 people who tested positive during this study, 56% had no awareness of their condition, either because they felt nothing or because they only felt mild symptoms which they attributed to a cold. or allergies.

Results that confirm early data from around the world suggesting that throughout the pandemic, 25% to 40% of SARS-CoV-2 infections have been asymptomatic.

These latest facts are in some ways good news, as they underline the fact that Omicron tends to cause relatively mild symptoms, if any at all. On the other hand, the study also confirms the hypothesis that many people probably spread the virus unintentionally.

Two new studies reassure on vaccination during pregnancy

Messenger RNA Covid vaccines pose little risk in pregnant women, according to two recent studies. The first, published in the Lancet Infectious Diseases August 12, evaluated the immediate risks of side effects on more than 200,000 pregnant women after a messenger RNA vaccine. The second, published Thursday August 18 in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) measured, in the longer term, the possible risks concerning childbirth, based on the analysis of 85,000 births. In either case, the studies found no more miscarriages, complications, or even more medical care than in unvaccinated pregnant women.