The seventh wave of Covid-19 continues to sweep through France, and vaccination coverage is currently too low to cope with it. The High Authority for Health recommends speeding up the administration of the second booster dose to vulnerable people. The European Union and the United States also stress the importance of vaccination.
- The number of hospitalizations continues to increase in France
With 127,642 new cases on July 13, or +45% over 14 days, France is not having a very serene start to the summer on the front line of the Covid-19 epidemic. Especially since the numbers of hospitalizations in critical care (+27% over 14 days) and deaths (+120%) are also increasing. But if the peak of hospitalizations is far from being reached – there are currently 20,000 people hospitalized for a Covid-19 infection – the peak of contaminations seems to be on the way to being exceeded.
Indeed, for three days epidemiologists have observed a slow increase in the incidence rate, which should be confirmed with the effect of school holidays, a period conducive to curbing the dynamics of the epidemic. Nevertheless, Public Health France notes that this rate is still maintained “at a very high level”. The most seriously affected people have the same profile as in previous waves: the 80-89 year olds pay the heaviest price.
- The High Authority for Health recommends extending the administration of the booster dose
Yet considered vulnerable populations, only 37.1% of those over 80 and 28.5% of those over 60-79 received their second booster dose, equivalent to the fourth vaccine injection in most cases. These data published by Public Health France therefore show insufficient vaccination coverage to deal with the seventh wave which is currently raging. On Wednesday July 13, the High Authority for Health (HAS) recommended extending the administration of the booster dose to people under the age of 60 identified as vulnerable to Covid-19, to pregnant women and to people in contact. regular with immunocompromised. All these people are therefore eligible and can make an appointment to receive a booster dose, provided that the last injection took place more than three months ago for people over 80 and immunocompromised people and over six months for the others.
Same message from the side of the World Health Organization in Europe, which recommended, Tuesday July 12, the administration of a second booster dose of vaccine against Covid-19 for vulnerable people. The fifty or so countries covered by the WHO regional office are thus called upon to administer a second booster dose to “immunocompromised individuals aged five years and over, as well as to their close entourage”, before encouraging “people elderly, health workers and pregnant women” to visit vaccination centres.
- Canada authorizes vaccination of children under 5 with Moderna
The Ministry of Health of Canada authorized Thursday, July 14 the use of the Moderna vaccine for children from six months to 5 years old, a first in the country for this age group. Thus, approximately 1.7 million children are now eligible for vaccination against Covid. “After a rigorous and independent scientific review of the evidence, Health Canada has determined that the benefits of this vaccine for children 6 months to 5 years of age outweigh the risks,” the ministry said in a statement. The quantity of vaccine inoculated corresponds to half of the dose intended for children aged 6 to 11 years and to a quarter of that administered for those over 12 years of age.
- The WHO’s “red alert” for childhood vaccinations around the world
This authorization comes in a global context of great mistrust regarding the vaccination of children in general. The World Health Organization and Unicef deplore, in a report, a sharp drop in childhood vaccination against diseases other than Covid-19. Thus, the proportion of children having received the three doses of the vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus and poliomyelitis has fallen from 86% in 2019 to only 81% in 2021. Worldwide, some 25 million children are therefore at risk. by the DTP, i.e. 6 million more than in 2019. For the authors of the report, the Covid-19 crisis and misinformation are at the origin of this continuous decline, the largest in a generation.
- The United States stresses the importance of vaccination
Faced with an increase in hospitalizations, the American health authorities insisted, on Tuesday July 12, on the importance of vaccination against the development of serious forms of Covid. The United States records more than 5,000 Covid-related hospitalizations every day, “double compared to admissions in May”, according to the director of the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control, Rochelle Walensky. This increase is linked to the meteoric rise of the Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 sub-variants, detected for the first time in April and which represent respectively 16% and 65% of the virus currently circulating in the United States.
- A sharp rise in the number of cases in Moscow
Cases of Covid-19 have started to rise sharply in Moscow, the health authorities of the Russian capital announced on Tuesday July 12. “Over the past week, new cases of Covid-19 have increased by 57% compared to the previous week,” according to Moscow social services. Thus, the authorities recommend wearing a mask in public spaces.