Health. New vaccination campaign against Covid-19: what for?

Here we go again: this Monday, April 15 marks the start of a new vaccination campaign against Covid-19. It is open until June 16. “This vaccination renewal approach is part of a collective desire to protect the most vulnerable populations and to limit the spread of the virus throughout the year,” specifies the Ministry of Health.

Weak indicators

For many, Covid-19 seems to be ancient history. The last “wave” of the epidemic, in the fall, remained relatively weak. “The last epidemic was an epidemic that can be considered moderate in terms of health impact. We are dealing with a highly immunized population […] and still dealing with the Omicron family, which is a family of variants and sub-variants less virulent than the one we experienced in 2020 and 2021,” the president of the technical commission on vaccinations explained to the High Authority on Monday. health (HAS), Anne-Claude Crémieux, on franceinfo.

Today, the impacts are still very low. According to data from Public Health France, the national incidence rate was 1.28 per 100,000 inhabitants in the last week of March.

“Covid-19 surveillance indicators were stable and at low levels in the city and at the hospital. In wastewater, the detection of SARS-CoV-2 remained at a very low level,” confirms the organization in its acute respiratory infection surveillance bulletin, published on April 10.

During the first week of April, Public Health France recorded 222 visits to the emergency room for suspected Covid-19, including 77 hospitalizations. So why a new vaccination campaign? We’ll explain it to you.

Protect the most vulnerable

The primary objective of this new campaign is to ensure the protection of the most vulnerable people. The target audience for this spring vaccination campaign confirms this: these are people aged 80 and over, immunocompromised patients, nursing home residents and people at “very high risk” as part of a decision medical. These people are in fact those “whose immune protection decreases more quickly over time”, recalls the HAS in a notice published at the beginning of February.

“The most vulnerable people remain the main victims of Covid. If we look at what happened this winter, with 33,000 hospitalizations, two thirds of these hospitalizations concerned people over 75 years old. And the deaths are still more than 90% of people over 65,” Anne-Claude Crémieux told Franceinfo.

Since the beginning of October 2023, 88% of the 691 people hospitalized in intensive care for Covid-19 had a comorbidity, indicate data from Public Health France. Among those whose vaccination status was documented (331 cases), 93% had not been vaccinated for less than six months.

The risk factor of the Olympics

Protecting these vulnerable populations is all the more essential as France hosts the Olympic Games in three months. However, the Olympics can, “in the event of an upsurge in the spring or summer, serve as an accelerator” to a Covid-19 epidemic, estimates Anne-Claude Crémieux. “Doing your recall during the spring will allow you to be protected during the summer period, particularly during the Olympic and Paralympic Games during which the movement of people from all over the world could promote an epidemic wave”, underlines the health insurance on his site.

The authorities also do not rule out the arrival of a new variant, which would be more transmissible or even less sensitive to vaccines and existing immunity. In this context, it is all the more relevant that those most at risk have sufficient protection.