Can you postpone your second Covid vaccine injection? As the summer is just around the corner, many French people are wondering if they can as they may go on a vacation. Yet, arrangements are possible… and for good reason: although the government has stated it was better to get both injections in the same vaccination center, extra doses will be delivered this summer in vaccination centers with a high tourist density, to prevent some people from postponing vaccination indefinitely.
This is the very problem: some of the French, worried about being vaccinated and leaving on a vacation have planned to come back to their vaccination place for their second dose, or would rather wait for September to get the two doses of the vaccine. A situation the Health Minister wants to avoid at all cost. Olivier Véran even said he was waiting for a new report from the health authorities to know if the second dose of mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna) could be postponed by 50 days after the second dose – instead of 42, as recommended by the health bodies.
The time period between the two injections the French wish they could extend or shorten to make sure they do not have to cut off their vacation, and it seems to be possible, according to Jean-Daniel Lelièvre, immunologist and head of the infectious disease unit at the Hôpital Henri-Mondor in Val-de-Marne. He told our peers from Le Parisien that moving the second injection date earlier or later “does not show any risk for health”, adding that a too big of a period could yet lose the vaccine effectiveness.
He reminded that “for the AstraZeneca vaccine, the ideal moment to fully enjoy the effects of the second dose is set between the 9th and 12th week”. As for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, “this window is set between the 3rd and 6th week”.
What happens if one exceeds the time period determined by the health authorities, namely 12 weeks for AstraZeneca and six weeks for both the mRNA vaccines? Once again, Lelièvre answers: “By week 7 for the first one, or week 13 for the other one, it can still work. But if you wait too long, the risk is to lose immediate effectiveness. And the other way around, if the second dose is to close from the first one, you win immediate effectiveness, but in a long-term basis… we don’t know!”, he explains. Moving your second injection earlier or later is a decision you should take seriously. It is in your hands, now.
