Towards a third Covid vaccine dose for people at-risk starting from this summer? This Saturday May 22, this is what Moderna Therapeutics French CEO Stéphane Bancel told our peers from Journal du Dimanche, stating that vaccinating people again from the end of summer would enable to prevent the spread of variants and the outbreak of new strains likely to cause a new epidemic wave.
He encourages to “vaccinate with a third dose all people at risk from the end of summer, especially nursing home lodgers given their first dose at the beginning of the year”, while adding the vaccine developed by the laboratory would prevent immunity “from one to three years, depending on sick”. But the problem with variants is still around and “increases the threat level”, he adds, hence the third dose being recommended.
According to him, after adults, teenagers should be vaccinated: “we then have to very quickly target teenagers between 12 and 17 years of age”, he says. “The ideal being to protect them before August. If we do not massively vaccinate, the risk of a fourth wave cannot be ruled out”, Bancel explains. This explains why he also intends to seek approval to the European Medicines Agency to deploy the vaccine for this age group.
He said the laboratory launched clinical trials to check the effectiveness of three different booster shots to fight against four of the variants. The primary results of these clinical trials are expected to be issued by early June prior to a new step involving in-human tests. The idea: “providing data to regulatory agencies in August for approval in September”.
For the record, Moderna vaccine is to be available from early June in GPs and pharmacies to vaccinate the adult population as soon as they are eligible.
