France said today that patients who have already received Covid-19 should only receive a dose of vaccine, making it the first country to adopt such a strategy and potentially the release of millions of doses amid a EU-wide struggle for job supply.
Health officials said one dose would be enough to ‘remind’ the body how to fight off the virus, as an earlier infection would have produced an immune response similar to the first look of the vaccine.
With 3.4million people infected in France last year, the new council will reduce demands for the spread of France’s spluttering job as it fights the bungled purchase of the EU, a tight bureaucracy and high levels of vaccine complaint.
It also comes after France withdrew from Britain to move away from the two-dose strategy – a move that has helped the UK vaccinate six times more people than France has done. so far.
France has delivered 3.5 doses per 100 people so far, below the EU-wide figure of 4.2 and far behind the UK figure of 20.0
All three EU – approved vaccines – Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca – are all administered in two doses as tests have shown to be effective in this way.
But initial scientific findings have shown that a single bullet can produce a ‘very strong response’ in people who have once fought the disease.
A study of 59 health workers who had taken Covid-19 found that they had higher antibody levels after just one injection than most people after two doses.
A separate study found that 41 people who survived Covid-19 had antibody levels 10 to 20 times higher after dose than those who had not previously had the infection.
‘The data presented in these two papers is not surprising but they are very encouraging,’ said psychologist Dr Eleanor Riley of the University of Edinburgh earlier this month.
Both papers show that previous infection with Covid-19 prioritizes the immune system to respond strongly to a single dose of Covid-19 vaccine. ‘
Dr Peter English, who chaired the BMA’s Public Health Medicine Committee, said the papers ‘describe exactly what science would predict’.
‘It would be perfectly reasonable to target increased doses of the vaccine at people who have not received a natural primer,’ he said.
The French public health authority has now adopted that approach, saying those who have already been infected should not be kicked for at least three months after recovering and possibly so as long as six months.
A single dose of vaccine will play a role in reminding ‘human immune systems’ of how they fought Covid-19, the health authority said.
‘At present no country has clearly identified a single dose of vaccine for people who have contracted Covid-19,’ he said.
French President Emmanuel Macron, pictured, has been criticized for questioning the effectiveness of the AstraZeneca vaccine, as the country struggles to eradicate its spread.
A vaccine is still being developed by Johnson & Johnson working with a single dose, but has not yet received emergency use approval from EU and US regulators.
The French vaccination program is still in its infancy six weeks after the EU’s dissolution, with just two million people receiving some form of injection so far compared to 13.5million in Britain of the same size.
And despite the UK currently almost dropping a second dose, Britain has dispensed 524,000 in total compared to 442,000 in France.
The UK’s strategy was rescued last week by French European affairs minister Clement Beaune, who accused Britain of taking ‘high risks’.
‘I do not think our citizens would accept all these dangers against the opinion of our scientists,’ he told French radio.
In fact, four top UK medical officials have backed the one-dose strategy and said one shot offers at least ‘great protection’ in the short term.
France is also among the countries that banned the AstraZeneca vaccine to children under 65 due to such a small sample among the elderly in clinical trials.
A woman is being vaccinated in Paris on Thursday, with France lagging behind Britain and some of its EU neighbors in the vaccination race
Emmanuel Macron has been criticized for questioning the effectiveness of the Oxford / AstraZeneca injection despite being approved for all organizations by EU regulators.
A study published earlier this month by YouGov and Imperial College London found that 44 per cent of French people said they would not be vaccinated, the highest number of any country in the study.
In contrast, people in Britain were willing to be vaccinated with 78 per cent saying they would, and 67 per cent later in Denmark.
France has also been embarrassed to see its own vaccination efforts fail from the ground in the country of the pioneer vaccine Pas Louis Pasteur.
The Pasteur Institute was working on a possible vaccine with drug dealer Merck, but it was launched last month following disappointing results in trials.
The new strategy for recovered patients could save millions of doses in a country where 3,406,685 people have been captured so far.
Although 80,803 of these have died, it appears that many more have developed antibodies but have never been tested due to scarce supply.